LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Christian tifyatatttt. 



Baccalaureate Sermons 



DELIVERED BY 

EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON, 



President of Brown University from 1872 to 1889. 







SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY. 

New York , . . BOSTON . . . Chicago. 
1896. 



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Copyright, 1896, 
By Silver, Burdett and Company. 



ffllnfocrsttu iPrrss: 
John Wilson ano Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



TO 

2Ef)E jlflemfier* 

OF 

THE SUCCESSIVE CLASSES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY, 

BEFORE WHOM THESE BACCALAUREATE 

SERMONS WERE DELIVERED, 

THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



THE following sermons are collected and given to 
the public in response to the wishes of many 
friends. They vary in length and completeness accord- 
ing to the varying ability of the reporters to seize the 
rapid utterances of the speaker; for, with one or two 
exceptions, they were prepared for publication from 
newspaper reports. But the shortest and most imperfect 
of the series present the leading thoughts and the progress 
of the argument. The editor has not, of course, felt at 
liberty to add to them, except at occasional defective 
points to complete the obvious intent of the speaker ; nor 
has anything been left out, except occasional repetitions 
of statement or expression. Even these redundancies are 
sometimes left as characteristic of the preacher's more 
familiar public addresses; like the amiable defects of 
our friends, they will not be unwelcome to those who 
sought and valued his pulpit teachings. 

The press of engagements as Commencement approached 
left to the President little time for writing out the theme 
selected for his annual discourse; and, indeed, it was 
not his custom to preach from notes. But it was only 
the form, not the substance of the sermon, which was 
left to the hazard of the occasion. The thoughts had 



8 PREFACE. 

been revolving and taking their logical place in his mind 
for weeks, perhaps months, before their utterance. 

Coming to Brown University from a Theological Sem- 
inary where his classes were engaged on subjects of high- 
est theological interest, he had to remember that he was 
speaking to younger men, as yet little exercised in the 
abstract forms of religious truth and inquiry. To this 
fact, and to the fact that he was specially addressing 
students whose attention he had been, for a year, stimu- 
lating by quick and trenchant question, is due the direct, 
personal style of the sermons. Only one or two' of them 
exhibit the more restrained, formal qualities usual in 
discourses preached on special occasions. 

They were " practically dialogued * — to use the ex- 
pression of a brilliant lecturer 1 before the students of 
Columbia College — with the graduating classes. The 
sudden interruption of the argument by a swift applica- 
tion or searching question ; the logic broken in upon by 
a pungent appeal or sharp thrust at the conscience, — 
these rapid parentheses show how purely practical the 
speaker's aim was. It was, in fact, in strong, simple 
terms, to impress upon the minds of each successive class, 
as his final word to them, the momentous truth that, in 
their future lives, the loftiest aims, the worthiest ends, 
the highest successes, were to be found, only and always, 
within the spiritual realm. As was said of Frederic 
Robertson, there was a " controlled passion " in his pulpit 
utterances which gave to them an intense reality and per- 
suasiveness. Addressed primarily to young men, no one 

1 The Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, of a series of Discourses pub- 
lished under the title of Primary Convictions. 



PREFACE. 9 

could hear his vigorous words, poured forth warm from 
the deepest convictions of his soul, without a strong, 
sympathetic impulse toward a grander, purer life. The 
upbuilding of Christian character was the ruling motive 
of every discourse. 

It is, of course, impossible on the printed page to con- 
vey an idea of the force, the elan, the magnetism of the 
spoken word. And yet, it may be permitted to add, that 
sermons subsequently preached in another city, charac- 
terized by the quiet authority of his years, and transfused 
with the glow of an ever-deepening faith and holy rever- 
ence, were, by many, accounted more powerful than those 
which swayed his Providence congregations. A deeper 
spiritual note, perhaps, was struck. As his day declined, 
the truth took on a more tender emphasis. The Christ 
whom he had always preached became to his faithful 
heart ever more and more a divine Friend, and, through 
His Holy Spirit, ever more and more his Light, his 
Strength, and his Inspiration. 

Harriet P. Eobinson. 

July, 1896. 



CONTENTS. 



-♦ 

PAGE 



Christ, the Wisdom of God. Sermon preached June 

22, 1873 • . . , . 13 

Christian Virtue. Sermon preached June 21, 1874 . . 28 
The Relation of Religion to Morality. Sermon 

preached June 13, 1875 40 

Inward Uprightness. Sermon preached June 18, 1876 . 59 
Nature and Claims of Moral Law. Sermon preached 

June 17, 1877 78 

The Sense of Duty. Sermon preached June 16, 1878 . 97 
Science and the Christian Religion. Sermon 

preached June 15, 1879 Ill 

The Right Aim in Life. Sermon preached June 13, 1880. 131 
The Search for Truth. Sermon preached June 12, 

1881 149 

The Sure Victory of Faith. Sermon preached June 18, 

1882 169 

Perils of the Present Day. Sermon preached June 17, 

1883 . 184 

Faith and Sense. Sermon preached June 15, 1884 . . 200 
The Life Worth Living. Sermon preached June 14, 

1885 208 

True Worship. Sermon preached June 13, 1886 . . . 222 
Nature and Revelation. Sermon preached June 17, 

1887 227 

Serving One's Generation. Sermon preached June 17, 

1888 235 

God glorified in Character. Sermon preached June 

16, 1889 . 243 



BACCALAUREATE SERMONS, 



CHEIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 

Christ . . . the ivisdom of God. 

1 Corinthians i., part of the 24th verse. 

SOME explanation of this universe is the instinctive 
demand of the human intelligence. It is a demand 
whispered at the dawning of consciousness. It grows in 
emphasis with the growth of years. It ceases only when 
the shadows are settling around us. The answers to this 
demand are now denominated, not, as in the text, " wis- 
dom," but " the love of wisdom " or philosophy. The 
sum of these answers constitutes the sum of human 
philosophy. Some kind of solution of the origin, the 
laws and methods of whatever is, must be given ; and 
philosophies of every description we therefore have, — the 
philosophy of the mind, the philosophy of mechanics, 
the philosophy of politics, — the philosophy of whatever 
is in this universe. But, as Socrates long ago intimated, 
and as Plato still more emphatically asserted, the grand 
philosophy is " the summation of man," — to tell what 
man is, whence man came, and whitherward man is 
bound. Paul tells us in brief phrase that the true 
philosophy is not that of Greece. But "the true phi- 
losophy," says the apostle, " is Christ ; " philosophy in 



14 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

every age is the measure of a people's intelligence, the 
index of the height to which they have ascended ; and 
not only of the intelligence of a people, but of every 
individual. Your philosophy and my philosophy is 
simply the measure of your and my intellectual stature. 
It tells what is your solution of the facts of your own 
being; and according to the rationality of that solution, 
you determine the dignity of the mind which propounds 
the solution. If philosophy be the measure of one's 
truest manhood, equally true is it that Christian philoso- 
phy is pre-eminently that measure and test. 

Philosophy proposes three grand questions : the facts 
of being, the laws of being, and the relations of being. 
Christ is said by the apostle to be in Himself the answer 
to whatever question philosophy can propound. Christ 
answers the questions which arise respecting the facts 
of our being, the laws of our being, the relations of 
our being. But mark the language : it is not the asser- 
tion of the apostle that the moral teachings of Christ are 
the true philosophy. You are not to distinguish between 
what Christ said and what Christ was. Human phi- 
losophers are clearly and broadly distinguishable from 
their philosophies. You must look not too narrowly into 
the personal history of even Socrates. But when Christ 
stood before men, Christ was what He said ; He embodied 
the principles which He enunciated. Human philoso- 
phers propound their premises, and then elaborately reach 
their conclusions. Christ Jesus spake from Himself — 
no deduction, no borrowing from any preceding teacher, 
l)ii t, in His own significant words, "Ye have heard of old 
time that it was said thus : Verily, I say unto you." Men 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOB. 15 

say that He spoke by intuition. Solve it as you will, 
what Christ said, Christ was. And thus it comes that 
Christianity requires a man to be what he believes and 
affirms. In this is the grand distinguishing character- 
istic between Christianity and any human philosophy. 
Human philosophy enunciates principles; you may 
adopt them, and remain unchanged. To adopt Christian 
philosophy is to become Christian. To be and to say 
are identical in Christianity. 

Happily, then, the three questions which philosophy 
propounds to man, Christ answers, " Whence are we ? 
Why are we here ? Whitherward are we bound ? " 
Human philosophy has never been able to give the 
shadow of an abiding answer. Judaism did not answer 
distinctly; it taught us something of God, but not 
clearly. Christ first gave to man the true idea of God 
as a Father. True, the poet in his imagination had said, 
" We are His offspring, " but it was poetry, and a mere 
imaging. Christ taught that we are the children of God. 
You may call Him, if you will, a Jewish peasant, unin- 
structed in the schools ; a man whose dialect and person 
betrayed His humble origin ; " familiar, it may be, " you 
say, " with the flowers and the sparrows ; " but Christ 
taught you and me to find God in every object of this 
universe, and not the God of the Pantheist, but a per- 
sonal God ; so that out of every flower we hear a Father's 
voice saying, " I made this for you, " and every sparrow 
saying to us that God watches over it. They are all 
familiar thoughts to us now ; but they came from Christ. 
Christ made known to us not only the Fatherhood of 
God, as the controversialist will tell you, but Christ made 



16 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

God personal, — among us, of us, caring for us, — 
brought Him into our homes, made Him speak to us 
in words we can understand, identified God with all that 
is beautiful and true in our nature, in our aspirations, 
in our thoughts. 

Christ taught us, not only whence we came, but why we 
live. Manifold had been the answers of the philosophers. 
For the sake of the state, they said ; the highest idea of 
man in the Greek philosophy was his identification with 
the state. The man, his property, his highest thought, 
were subjected to the one idea of the state. But when 
Christ began to tell man why he lived, and how to fulfil 
the design of his existence, language needed reconstruc- 
tion. Search the Greek ; the very meaning of the word 
" humility " is meanness. No Greek could understand 
what Christ meant by it. To the Greek, as in later days 
to Voltaire, it was " the grace of a whipped dog. " So of 
" righteousness ; " Christ gave to it a new meaning, and 
when He taught the dignity of manhood, the worth of 
virtue, individual responsibility, the words had new 
meanings given to them. And for the attainment of 
these personal attributes in their new meanings, man 
was required to live, and through them he was to fulfil 
the design of his existence. 

So, in respect to the destinies of man, vague and un- 
certain dreamers there had been. What idea does the 
human philosopher give of futurity ? Strip the future of 
everything that Christ has given us, and it is indefinite 
and uncertain. Christ Jesus lias made it clear to meo 
that to be immortal is to carry with us the results of this 
life, to carry with us all our garnered affections, all our 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 17 

achievements, all our precious thoughts, all our high 
aspirations ; that to be, is to be in the future what we 
are now. Christ made it a fact to man that immortality 
is perpetuity of personal being. 

Christ is the true philosophy as to the facts of our 
being ; He is also the true philosophy as to the laws of 
our being. These laws had been guessed by men. Here 
and there, glimmerings of the truth had been granted. 
Wonderful had it been if no ray of light had come to the 
human intellect; if no Confucius had ever grasped an 
immutable truth ; if no Buddha had ever laid hold of 
some fragment of the Abiding ; over this broad earth our 
God has smiled beneficent, giving truth to this one and 
light to that, leaving no one in helpless gloom. But it 
was Christ that enunciated once for all, in simplest 
language, the immutable truths of being. He has an- 
nounced them to you; he has announced them to me. 
Whence came this wondrous knowledge ? — a knowledge 
that stands the test of every form of criticism. Look at 
these philosophies of the past. You know that each 
strove to determine what was immutable truth. Each 
had some glimmerings. We read to-day what we call 
Christianity in Plato. We gather here and there many 
a truth from the Stoic; many a truth from Epicurus, it 
may be ; but after all, truth amid an accumulated amount 
of corruption which no human intellect can separate 
from the few truths scattered. Look at Christianity. 
Not a truth about it is lost. Point out, if you will, one 
solitary ethical principle taught by Christ that has been 
tested and found wanting. It is simply because Christ 
did not devise. He simply revealed. Christ drew aside 

2 



18 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

the curtain and told us what is, and has made it to be 
forever true that the ethical principles which bind us 
here are simply the revelations of our own immutable 
being. So that when Christ tells us what is obligatory, 
He simply tells us what is immutable. And these ethical 
principles which Christ has thus taught, are to-day tested 
and found by every man to be adequate to all his neces- 
sities. Whatever may be your peculiarities of constitu- 
tion, let these truths remain on your ear long enough to 
be sounded in the depths of your being. He who gave 
you your being has spoken to you in these revealed truths 
of Jesus Christ, saying to you what you are and what 
you must be, or perish. 

Christ, then, is the philosopher or philosophy, in 
enunciating the immutable truths of morality. The 
morality of to-day, the morality of the centuries, is 
simply the morality of Christianity ; all that which 
survives to-day is found in the Gospel of Christ. 

But there is another question which Christianity pro- 
pounds to us, and that is, the relation of man to the 
laws of his being and to destiny. Manifold are the 
answers. The philosopher of the past could merely throw 
in upon the great darkness of your mind the simply 
enunciated truths of moral obligation, and leave you to 
struggle with them in silence alone. Christ Jesus enun- 
ciated these truths, and when He enunciated them, said, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. " How familiar these words, how 
unmeaning to many, how inexhaustible to all who have 
pondered them — " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden* (with the oppressing thought of your 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 19 

obligations), "and I will give you rest." This is the 
grand philosophy of Christianity — this is the relation of 
Christ to man. It is on this point that men have con- 
centrated their minds, and it seems to me have obscured 
the simple teaching of Christ. We all know the medi- 
aeval theory ; alas ! that it still lingers among us. We 
all know how this has been repeated and incorporated in 
literature and hymns, that Christ Jesus lived and died, 
and by that death alone, once and for all, accumulated 
the merit which it is the special province of a delegated 
class of men to hand over to others ; or, that the grand 
office of Christ in visiting this world was to offer Him- 
self, simply that men, having wasted life, having de- 
graded their natures, should by His merit be transferred 
forever to the place which God had provided for them. 
The salvation was a process of reckoning, an arithmetical 
process, a commercial transaction. It still lingers among 
us, and there are people who tell me that, if I am to be 
saved by Jesus Christ, must it not be by imputation, 
must it not be by reckoning. No, now and f orevermore, 
no! God Almighty does not save men by reckoning, 
does not save men by causing us to look ever backward 
to a Christ that died once, and accumulated something 
which somebody is intrusted with, to transmit onward 
to us, Christ has delegated no man to stand between 
Himself and me. He who tells us that Christ is to be 
approached by His mother, or that Christ is to be ap- 
proached by some specially delegated and consecrated 
person, tells us a lie, tells us what Christ Himself repu- 
diates. " Come unto me, " says Christ. So that salva- 
tion will be serviceable to me and to you, my young 



20 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

friends, only as you go to Him in your own weakness 
and helplessness. 

This is our Christ, — God manifest in the flesh, and 
one of us, — as true and real a man as you, as true and 
real a man as I, with all the temptations and trials 
of man. Having put Himself into the position of one 
of our race, it was inevitable that He must die ; and 
because He did die and triumph, you and I will tri- 
umph. And why ? Not by trusting to what some one 
has told us has been accumulated, but by trusting to 
Him, — not to a dead Christ, but to a living Christ, — 
to a living, personal Christ, to-day here. Not a Christ 
hung upon a crucifix, not a wax image, not the Christ 
of a dogma, not the Christ of a mere creed. Let us, 
in the name of this abused Christ, arise up, and once 
for all away with whatever stands between us, whether it 
be dogma, whether it be creed, or whether it be Church 
or priest. I set before you that personal Christ who 
says to you, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. " And Christ 
died for you, if you will trust in Him, but not without 
that trust. He died for no man that does not find Him 
to be a risen and exalted Saviour, — a personal Christ, and 
a personal salvation to him who desires His salvation. 
This, then, we understand to be the true philosophy 
of His personal relation to man. When it says that God 
is manifest in the flesh ; when it tells us that Christ took 
our nature and bore our iniquities, died for our sins, — it 
tells us a fact, an immutable fact, — the fact that He does 
die for us if we put our trust in Him, but if we do not, 
he dies no more for us than if we never had been. But 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 21 

He is yours, if you come to Him as one who has passed 
through this way of life, just such a way as every one 
of you must pass ; you will have your temptation in the 
wilderness, you will have your struggle, you will have 
your garden where in your agony of soul you will be con- 
fronted with the devil. There is no other that can guide 
you in the wilderness ; there is no other that can guide 
you in the garden ; there is no other that can guide you 
in the time that shall come, when you must be either 
crucified in your thought, in your flesh, and in your 
spirit, when you must surrender up all but what God 
Almighty lays upon you, or sacrifice yourself ; when you 
must either accept the crucifixion of selfishness, and lust, 
and evil desire, or must die the death of the doomed and 
abandoned. Let there be no trifling about this matter. 

Law, we have said, is as immutable as the throne of 
God. Salvation is as free as the air to any man that will 
put himself into relation with Christ ; and salvation is as 
impossible as the transformation of yourself into a Deity, 
unless you shall come into relation with some one compe- 
tent to be an object of trust and a Saviour. Say, then, 
that Christ is to be your Saviour. Where else have you 
found one ? I set Him before you as the true Philosopher 
of the method of human redemption, an atoning Saviour, 
who died for you, who died for me; one who died in 
obedience to an inexorable necessity ; one whose agony 
in the garden, whose agony on the cross, you can solve 
by no empty theory short of this simple fact, — that 
having taken our nature, having put Himself into that 
vortex, He must either bear the great burden of our guilty 
being, and bearing it, rescue our nature, or sink forever. 



22 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

You and I must find our trust in Him that hath con- 
quered, or we shall be conquered. 

Young men, I say to you now, that just as true as 
God rules, if you trifle with evil, if you sell yourself to 
temptation, just so true it is that you will die in hope- 
less agony, and reap as you sow. Nor is God's mercy 
thus impeached. It is impeached if any man tells you, 
" He is so gracious, He will forgive you. " Alas, alas, 
God is not a being who has power to arrest penal conse- 
quences. Eemember what we have here said : It is not 
in His power to arrest penal consequences. It is written 
in the very heart of your being, and you can realize your 
own nature lifted up, expanded, harmonized according to 
the idea presented in Christ Jesus, only as you come 
into relation with Him. Therefore, I commend Him to 
you as the Philosopher touching your relation to law, to 
God, to yourselves, and your destiny. 

Here I am not unaware of the objections that will 
present themselves at once. You will ask : " Is not 
Christianity questioned in our day ? " " Is it not con- 
fronted by men whose opinions are enunciated with all 
the assurance that accompanies the enunciation of Chris- 
tian truth on the part of its adherents ? " Undoubtedly, 
just in proportion to the clearness and emphasis witli 
which Christian truth has been enunciated, has been the 
counter enunciation of opposing sentiment. It is not 
mere legend that tells us that when our Lord began His 
career upon the earth, the devil confronted Him. Just 
in proportion to the clearness of truth in every age will 
be the declaration of an opposing thought It is the 
nature and the history of man and of human opinion. 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 23 

The opposers of Christianity revive all of the opinions 
that have been tried in the ages of the past. What do 
they propose ? Do they offer you anything which, hav- 
ing been tried, is found to be superior to Christianity, 
either in its answer respecting your origin and destiny, 
or respecting the laws of your being, or respecting the 
methods of attaining to the realization of your ideal? 
What is it that these opponents of Christianity contem- 
plate ? Is it a higher standard of human being ? Is it a 
higher character ? Where does one of them exhibit it ? 
What, then, do they offer ? It is not a higher civiliza- 
tion. When they tell you that Christianity has ob- 
structed the progress of the race, ask them for the proof. 
Doubtless there has been perversion. The great wonder 
that the Church presents to the world is, that long ago it 
was not sunk in the depths of the sea by its professed 
friends. I confess that there is nothing that so strikes 
me with amazement, as that Christianity has survived 
the errors, the superstitions, the debasements of its adhe- 
rents. It is of God that it has been able to carry such 
an oppressive load of human error and superstition. 
When, therefore, we set before you Christianity, do not 
mistake objections to the errors of its friends, for objec- 
tions to Christianity itself. It is for this reason that I 
tell you that it is not to the professed priest, it is not to 
the professed claimant of divine prerogative; but it is to 
Christ that I commend you. 

There is another form of objection to which 1 must 
refer. A strong weight of prejudice rests upon the minds 
of young men that the Christ of the Gospel is a person 
specifically belonging to the Church and to the Sunday, 



24 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

or at best to the occasion of the funeral service, when all 
else is gone. I commend no such Christ to you here 
to-day. That is the error which lingers among us, when 
certain persons stand among you, and claim a certain 
prerogative because they are dignified by the title of 
minister. I know of no title given by God or man other 
than simply the ability to do what Christ tells us, and 
that is, to explain the truth aright, and present, in one's 
own character, the doctrines of Christ. The only man 
whom God has called, whom the Almighty has predes- 
tinated to teach religion, is he who, in his own person, 
exhibits in some degree what Christianity requires ; and 
who, by exhibiting, is competent, and authorized to teach 
it to others. It is not, therefore, the religion or the 
Christ that belongs to a specific class of men. The 
Christ of the Gospel is the Christ of the highway, the 
Christ of the feast, the Christ of the wedding, the Christ 
of the market-place, the Christ that is to be carried with 
you wherever you go. I warn you, young gentlemen, 
that whatever your office, you take Christ Jesus with you 
wherever you are. The one want of our time is a Christ 
in the counting-room, a Christ in the Legislative Assem- 
bly, a Christ in the court-room ; not a Christ presented 
in the empty forms of perfunctory prayer ; not a Christ 
that belongs to the church, shut up in it, to be presented 
to us only on the Sabbath day ; not one to whom I am 
going to resort in whining petitions when I have to 
surrender up this life, — but a living, personal Christ, of 
whom, young gentlemen, you speak not in profanity, not 
in flippant language, but whom you will dare to avow 
when you stand before juries and courts, whom you will 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 25 

avow in your daily transactions with the world, in your 
homes, in society, always, everywhere. This is the error 
of our time, that we have separated our religion from 
our morality. We have a Christ for sacred days ; a 
Christ for special occasions, — but no Christ to walk 
these streets and stand here among men. There is a sort 
of spirit in this day that taboos the man who dares speak 
of Christ on a festive occasion. No, no, friends, this 
has been our error ; this has been our danger. This is 
the ruin of our times, that we have men who sit at the 
sacramental board and hold positions in the church, and 
yet stretch out their smooth palms and take bribes ; who 
stand ever ready to legislate, and yet by their acts deny 
the Christ whose presence among the money-changers, in 
the market-place, everywhere, said, " Be honest ; be open ; 
be frank. " 

This is the Christ I commend to you, young gentle- 
men. Never be ashamed to avow yourselves as the fol- 
lowers of Him who was the ideal man. Why be ashamed 
to say, " I accept Christ as my pattern, " because there is 
a lingering notion among men that you are only to call 
on Christ when you die, or when you are where the priest 
is ? Our Christ is the Christ of all time, the Lord of the 
earth, the Light of men, not simply a Lesson for Sunday- 
school children, but a Mighty Power for stalwart men, 
whose glory it becomes, to stand up and say, each one, 
" I am a Christian. " And let it be understood, wherever 
we are, on whatever occasion, that Christ is not the special 
property of the man known as the minister. I am almost 
ashamed, at times, to have men say, " You are a minister, 
are you ? " Why a minister any more than you that call 



26 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

yourself a Christian ? I claim no right to preach Christ 
from anything committed to me. No mortal man 
authorized me ; no mortal man can. I speak of Christ 
because I trust in Him ; He is our Light and Peace and 
Saviour. He is the " Wisdom of God, " the Creator of 
this world, the Saviour of man, and I know of no other. 
Young gentlemen, this is the Christ that I want to com- 
mend to you, — the Wisdom of God. And I warn you 
never to be ashamed of Him. Oh ! that any man ever 
dared to poison his lips by speaking His name profanely. 
If any of you have ever dared to trifle with that name, in 
God's name, I warn you to do so no more. Think of His 
dignity ! Think of His humility ! I can think of no 
higher thing than that. When you stand at the bar, or 
in the pulpit, as educated men, competent to guide, I 
beseech you to say, " before all men" " I have accepted 
Christ as my teacher ; I accept Him as my example ; I 
accept Him as the grandest man that ever stood upon this 
earth ; I accept Him as the Divine Being come down 
from heaven. " You need not be cringing ; you need not 
be timid. I warn you against cant. It is death to all 
true manliness, to all true virtue; it is death to every- 
thing dignified and dignifying. But in simplicity, in 
manliness, in honor, in righteousness, say with Julius 
Muller, that if Christ were a mere ideal, that ideal would 
be worth dying for — that if He had never lived, it would 
be worth laying down your life to give to future genera* 
tions the ideal of such a man. But He is more than that 
He is with you always. Will you despise Him ? Will 
you turn away from Him? Will you neglect Him ? I 
ofter Him to you to-day as the Infinite Wisdom. 



CHRIST, THE WISDOM OF GOD. 27 

I have spoken of the trouble you will have in life. 
Stern trial will come somewhere, and at some time. 
May you meet it manfully. May you dare to say " I 
accept this great Being as my Guide ; " and then, when 
the times come for you to lay down your lives, may the 
Father's smile rest upon you ; may you see Christ, and 
may you hear His voice saying to you, " Be of good cour- 
age. I have overcome. " " I am the resurrection and the 
life. " Young gentlemen, be Christians in the Christian 
sense. God be with you all. 



CHEISTIAN VIETUE. 

Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue. 

2 Peter i. 5. 

ACCOEDING to the uniform teaching of Scripture, it 
is impossible for man without faith either to 
please God, or to pass through this life without final and 
fatal loss. It is accordingly insisted upon that whoever 
will be saved shall believe. Nor is this an arbitrary 
requirement. Faith is insisted upon in compliance with 
the necessities of human nature ; for faith is the common 
principle on which everything human that is enduring or 
valuable is dependent. Society rests upon it Without 
it government is impossible. Man, if faith ceases, ceases 
his exertions ; and according to the strength of his faith 
are all his personal efforts. Faith is the informing 
principle of all character. A man, every man, is accord- 
ing to the objects of his trust. 

The difference between Christian faith and the common 
beliefs of men is a difference between the object or objects 
believed in ; the difference between faith and the common 
beliefs of men is also a difference between the qualities 
or attributes of the objects trusted, or believed in. 
Christian faith rests upon Christian objects and seeks 
Christian ends. It manifests itself in unmistakable 
products. These products are variously designated ; for 
it is noticeable that the common language which Chris- 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 29 

tianity now employs has been derived from varied sources, 
not from the Bible alone. Thus the language which it 
employs in designating the results of faith has been bor- 
rowed from other than Scriptural sources. Two not infre- 
quent terms in our modern religious and philosophical 
language have come to us from the philosophers of an- 
tiquity. No terms in Christian literature are more com- 
monly used than " morality " and " virtue. " But " moral- 
ity" is a word to which the Scriptures are at every point 
strangers. The word is foreign alike to the terminology 
of the Old Testament and of the New. " Virtue " is ap- 
propriated here and there incidentally, — most commonly 
in a meaning other than that which it had with the 
philosophers either of Greece or Rome. And yet the 
word in the text, more, perhaps, than in any other 
single passage, retains its ancient meaning, but purified 
and transfigured by the transforming power of Christian- 
ity. When we turn to the Bible, the words which meet 
us are " good works, " " righteousness, " " godliness, " 
* holiness. " These are terms which differ only in the 
point of view occupied by the speaker, from those two 
words which I have referred to as having come down 
from heathen moralists; between "virtue" and cc godli- 
ness " — or, as it may be put, " god-likeness " — there is 
much of resemblance; and between what we designate 
as "morality," and what the Scriptures call "good 
works, "there is the closest affinity. And when the 
word " morality " is understood in that sense which, 
through centuries of continued discussion, has come to 
be represented by it, then we say it embodies a genuine 
Christian thought, — but only because Christianity has 



30 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

adopted it, infused into it its own meaning, imparted to 
it something of its own life. 

But the one word which is presented to you to-day is 
" virtue. " " Add to your faith virtue " — not simply in 
the Roman sense of manliness ; not in the narrower sense 
of courage ; nor are you to understand by it any single 
virtue. Philosophers have discussed long and ardently 
the question, " what are the great virtues which consti- 
tute permanent and worthy character ? " From Plato to 
our own day, what are called in technical language the 
" cardinal virtues, " have been sought, but they are yet 
undetermined. Certain cardinal virtues are accepted by 
all. What is fundamental of the series is yet a disputed 
question, except by those who plant themselves upon 
the Christian basis, and receive their morality from Jesus 
of Nazareth. When, therefore, we speak of " virtue, " 
let us not understand any one virtue. You may adopt, 
if you choose, the modern, common classification of the 
cardinal virtues, and say that they consist in fidelity, 
in justice (or justness), in temperateness, and in courage. 
But no one of these constitutes virtue, — no one, if you 
sever it from the others. The united four constitute, 
provided they are pervaded by an informing spirit, what 
our text and what moralists recognize as true Christian 
virtue; embodying all the single virtues, uniting them 
into one grand comprehensive, harmonizing spirit which 
gives to man courage to be faithful in his convictions, 
courage in subduing his natural tastes to the require- 
ments of temperance, — and temperance in no narrow 
and technical sense, but temperance in that broad spirit 
which says to each taste and each appetite, " so far and 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 31 

no farther," — " temperateness" being perhaps a better 
term than temperance. So that underneath what is 
designated by the term virtue, you will understand 
"ability," — power to execute your convictions, ability 
to conform yourself to what you know to be right. It is 
not something assumed. It is not something fleeting. 
You might say it is like that which the athlete, from the 
severity of his regimen, and the protracted discipline 
to which he subjects himself, acquires, a sinewy, vigor- 
ous, supple strength, to do just that which he proposes to 
do. Or, it may be said, it is more than this ; it is a 
subtile, ethereal power, penetrating the very fibres of the 
soul ; uniting a man into one complete personality, by 
which what he sees to be right he does, by which what 
he is compelled to regard as right, he is able to do. 
This, then, is Christian Virtue, ever remembering it is 
" Christian" because it is derived from Jesus Christ, and 
is the result of the indwelling spirit of Jesus Christ. 

Why seek to acquire Christian virtue, — such a presence 
and power and abiding ability ; not one virtue, but all 
virtues so blended that a man is said to possess personal 
virtue ? There are advantages in its possession. There 
are reasons why you should seek to make yourselves 
possessors of it. 

First of all, it gives an unfailing protection, — a pro- 
tection that envelops its possessor in a panoply which 
no weapon can penetrate. It surrounds him with a coat 
of mail which the dart of no archer can pierce ; or, chang- 
ing the image, it is putting within the man a spiritual 
force which comes forth spontaneously and invariably at 
the required moment. It is a spirit, a life, a power ; and 



32 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

it is as a spirit, a life, a power, that it harmonizes and 
brings into a rounded wholeness, every attribute or 
quality of character. Thus its possessor can confidently 
confront the world, clad in an armor which no power 
can crush and no foe penetrate. 

More than this, it gives to its possessor a constant 
peace and satisfaction. To him who possesses Christian 
virtue in the sense given to the term, there is a profound 
consciousness of security. It may be the result of out- 
ward trial ; it is the result of repeated moral conflict, but 
once possessed, it is a conscious possession, — not vain- 
glorious, not boastful, but an inward, silent, personal 
force. We are told that it is a pleasure to stand in con- 
scious safety in a tower and witness the rush and rage of 
battle. It is a pleasure from a high cliff to look out 
upon the ocean lashed into fury by the raging winds. 
But there is no pleasure like that of mingling in the 
storm of moral conflict, consciously clad in an armor 
which is impenetrable, and which insures a certain vic- 
tory. There is pleasure in the sense of security ; but it is 
heightened into exultation when taking part in the fray, 
when confronting evil, when bearding the wicked in 
their dens. The man feels that righteousness is in him, 
that integrity is his, and that a Divine power rests upon 
him, because he has lost himself in the consciousness of 
that invisible and enveloping Presence that in using him, 
is charging his weakness with a Divine strength. Every 
man who, through painstaking and tears and supplica- 
tions and prayers and conflicts, has acquired this sense of 
security, knows what I mean when I say that the posses- 
sion of it gives a pleasure with which no honor of men. 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 33 

no earthly wealth, no other possible acquisition, can 
compare. He who has it dwells in the unbroken peace 
of God, — a peace which, in the language I have read to 
you, " passes all understanding. " 

Again, this virtue of which I have spoken, is an inde- 
structible possession ; not simply something covering him 
as with a cloak, but something infused into the very 
fibres of his spiritual being. This, then, is part and 
parcel of one's own identity. When that point is reached, 
it may be called character, if you choose ; it is that 
which a man, having once acquired, can never be de- 
spoiled of. It is his own. He walks abroad in .God's 
universe with an indestructible possession. So long as 
he exists, so long his virtue abides ; and it abides with 
him, because it is something congenial, kindred, a com- 
ponent part of his own nature, a vital element in his own 
spiritual nature. 

Nor need any man, with his technical, theological dia- 
lect, be disturbed when we say it is a righteousness im- 
parted. It is not alone imputed, it is imparted; and 
that man who knows anything of true Christianity, 
knows that He from whom he receives righteousness and 
life is a Being of whom it is said, " He is in you the 
hope of glory ; " and you are in Him, " your life is hid 
with Christ in God ; " and " he that hath this hope in 
him purifieth himself, " so that " as Christ is, so are they 
who are His. " This personal virtue, then, is something 
which God, in His infinite wisdom, has actually imparted 
to man, as his own inalienable possession. It is said 
that knowledge shall pass away ; of the various graces, 
that one and another shall cease ; but that there is one 

3 



34 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

which shall abide, charity, — charity which embodies 
all righteousness, which is only another name for, and 
is of the very essence of, virtue. 

But the query arises, How is this Christian virtue to 
be acquired ? Certainly not by any faith in abstractions, 
whether they be pantheistic or positivistic, nor by faith 
in the immutable in nature. These are virtues especially 
set forth in our day. There is a kind of ideal, stoical 
virtue, like the marble statue, — beautiful to behold but 
pulseless, inanimate. Is that the virtue to take the 
place of Christian virtue ? You may acquire such. It is 
not difficult, but it is the virtue of the cynic, it is the 
virtue of the cold-blooded soul, from whom all sympa- 
thies have departed ; but Christian virtue is that which 
takes man as God's creation, takes every instinct, every 
faculty, every endowment, every aspiration under its 
control, harmonizes, blends them all into the realization 
of the ideal man, — the perfect man in Christ Jesus. 
How shall you acquire it ? I have said that much de- 
pends on your faith. If you are led on by an absorbing 
trust in some human end, it will stamp itself on your 
character, for every man becomes like the object of his 
trust ; it will write itself in lines easily read of all men ; 
it will be depicted in your countenance, show itself in 
your gait, and breathe in the very spirit that animates 
you. Such a lower end reveals itself in the whole course 
of a man's life ; it can never lead to the virtue for which 
I am pleading. The virtue I mean is that derived by 
trust in Him who alone of all the beings that ever stood 
on this earth could be called "the perfect man,* 1 — 
Christ Jesus, the Ideal, the Ileal, — " God manifest in the 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 35 

flesh. " And the virtue thus acquired by trust in Him 
may seem at first a faint spark which the slightest breath 
can extinguish ; but once begun, God in His mercy pro- 
tects it, cherishes it, feeds it, until it grows up into 
full life, " unto the measure of the stature of the ful- 
ness of Christ. " 

But the virtue of which I have spoken has been called 
" the virtue of the weak-minded. " It has been said that 
it is not the virtue of the stout-hearted and heroic, but 
that it begins in penitence, in tears, in self -distrust. 
So it does ; and there is no true personal virtue which 
has not this beginning ; there is no other which bears 
the stamp of divinity, no other which its possessor can 
prove, no other which can survive the trials and dangers 
of this life. 

" True dignity abides 
With him alone who in the silent hour 
Of inward thought can still suspect and still 
Revere himself." 

There is no virtue in this world which does not first 
of all begin in self-distrust, in self-humiliation, in self- 
abnegation. No man ever finds himself until, for the 
sake of the ideal and the real as illustrated in Christ, 
he shall have lost himself ; and he who has lost himself 
for Christ's sake, finds himself the possessor of Christ's 
power, Christ's virtue, Christ's righteousness, — of a 
personal righteousness, which, given by God, is his own 
inalienable possession. 

Young Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : You are 
gathered for the last time here in sacred service. I have 



36 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

attempted to set before you something of the value of 
Christian virtue and the method of its acquisition. 
Will you make it yours ? There are other ends in life ; 
they are numberless. They salute you on the street 
corner; they come borne to your ears on every wind. 
You are solicited on every hand to issues innumerable in 
life. There is the one still small voice that says to you, 
be true to yourselves, true to your religious convictions, 
true to your God ; and, being thus true, in patience, in 
humbleness, in distrust of self, but in an immovable faith 
in God, you shall acquire a virtue that will support you 
in every change of life, that will survive when this world 
has passed away from your vision. Little will it be to 
the glory of any one of you, if at the end of your career 
the most that can be said of you shall be, " he did not 
violate the commandments of the moral law. He was 
neither a thief nor a liar, and he did not debase his high 
talents and his possessions to minister to his appetites 
and passions. " In this age of venality and self- 
indulgence, this age in which betrayal of trusts is so 
common, it may seem something of praise to say of a 
man that he never betrayed his trust. But when you 
look far out into the future, when you think of all that 
God has intrusted you with, may He keep you from the 
dishonor of the merely negative praise that you were not 
debased and debauched, and did not defraud ; rather, may 
you carry with you the consciousness of integrity, of an 
upright purpose, — a purpose which no allurement shall 
ever make you swerve from ; a determination that, with 
God's help, you will do despite to every tempter, you 
will adhere only to honor, truth, and righteousness. If 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 37 

wealth conies, if honors come, be thankful ; but let the 
one fixed and steady and unflinching purpose of your 
life be to make of yourselves noble men, — men to whom 
God has given the virtue that was in Christ, — the ability 
to follow your convictions, and power at all times and 
under all circumstances, to stand up with an open face, 
with a serene brow, and, looking into heaven, to say, 
with no vain boastfulness, " I thank thee, God, that 
Thou hast kept me true and firm and steadfast. " That is 
worth all the honor of men. For what are the honor of 
men and the possessions of this earth in comparison with 
the possession of that which goes with you forever, and 
which God shall recognize as the stamp He Himself has 
put upon you ? 

I see opening from this place a lengthened road. Along 
it I see your hurrying steps in the great race of life. 
Now one and now another drops by the way to rise no 
more. You pursue your forward course more gravely, 
with diminishing numbers and slackened pace. A half 
century has sped, and only two or three of you are 
patiently, faithfully toiling up yonder hill. As you 
wend your way amid the familiar scenes, your frames 
bowed with the weight of years, your brows furrowed 
with thought and care, you turn and survey the past. 
Ah ! may the gracious words, may the sweet charities 
which you have exchanged with one another in the last 
three days, ever abide with you as indestructible memo- 
ries ; may you know what it is to have lived honestly, 
never to have proved unfaithful to your convictions, 
never, in this age of venality, to have sold yourselves 
for name, place, or wealth. I adjure you, keep your 



38 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

spirits pure, and turn from the tempter in whatever form 
he may present himself. 

And, above all, let me ask you to remember that this 
virtue of which I have spoken will never come to you, 
until your faith shall have rested in that One Being who 
alone is the Source of it. Let it rest there to-day, young 
gentlemen. You each have known what it is in child- 
hood's simplicity to bow the knee before Him; and 
though you are now young men, you are not too old, and 
never can be, to bow in childlike simplicity at the feet of 
Christ, and ask Him to keep you and cleanse you from 
evil, and to strengthen you for the right, and to give you 
a virtue that shall be satisfied with no mere negative 
qualities, but a virtue like that acquired by men of old 
who were ready to lay down their lives for righteous- 
ness' sake. You may have despised the methods of the 
monastic periods, and you may have looked over the 
annals of the Puritans and said, " Alas ! what a mis- 
take, what misapprehension ! " But they were all men 
of integrity, of patience, of self-sacrifice. And in this 
age of criticism, when we cast reflections on the past, 
and talk of the Christianity which so refines and civilizes 
and promotes the graces and industries of society, I warn 
you to remember that there is no virtue, there is no 
true piety, there is no true character, there is nothing 
worthy to be possessed, which is not to be possessed by 
that same spirit which led men in the past age of 
monasticism, in the age of the Puritan, in every age, to 
sacrifice self, to sacrifice ease, to sacrifice all indulgence 
to the one determined purpose to honor God. I charge 
you, as my final word, to make yourselves possessors of 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 39 



the virtue which God alone, through Jesus Christ, can 



give. 



" Who, Lord, when life is o'er 
Shall to Heaven's blest mansions soar % 
Who, an ever welcome guest, 
In Thy holy place shall rest ? 
He who shuns the sinner's road, 
Loviug those who love their God, 
Who, with hope and faith unfeigued 
Treads the path by Thee ordained ; 
He who trusts in Christ alone, 
Not in aught himself hath done ; 
He, great God, shall be Thy care 
And Thy choicest blessings share." 



THE EELATION OF EELIGION TO MOEALITY. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter ; fear God 
and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of 
man / [or, as it is otherwise rendered, u for this is the duty 
of every manP*\ 

ECCLESIASTES xii. 13. 

THE author of Ecclesiastes seems to have given us a 
summary of the moral and religious speculations 
current in his day. With such changes of phraseology as 
the difference between Oriental and Occidental methods 
of thought and expression, and the products of modern 
science, may make necessary, the summary represents 
not inappropriately the speculations current in our own 
day. Certainly there are sentiments in the book crude 
and sceptical enough to satisfy the extremest free thinker 
of our time, but also there are sentiments reverent, devout, 
and true enough to be a perpetual joy to the Christian of 
every age. At one time the author says, * That which 
befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts : as the one 
dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; 
so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast. " In 
another place, he says, " Then I commended mirth, be- 
cause a man hath no better thing under the sun than to 
eat, to drink, and to be merry. " But the same author 
tells us again that as the dust returns to the earth as it 
was, so the spirit returns to God who gave it. Though 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 41 

he bursts forth in his address to the young man, " Be- 
joice, young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart 
cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the 
ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes ;" yet 
he adds, " but know thou, that for all these things, God 
will bring thee into judgment. " And when he had sur- 
veyed the whole field of thought, he tells us, in the 
words of the text, " Let us hear the conclusion of the 
whole matter ; fear God and keep His commandments ; 
for this is the whole duty of man. " 

It is a twin thought which is presented, a two-fold 
proposition. It is an affirmation of what, during all 
time, has never ceased to be a subject of dispute, — the 
relation of religion to morality. The author affirms that 
they are indivisible. Expounders of Christian truth in 
every age, when they have expounded truth according 
to these utterances, have affirmed that religion and moral- 
ity are ever indivisible parts of one whole ; that a true 
religion is impossible without a true morality, and a 
true morality without a true religion. There is rea- 
son in our own day for a reaffirmation of the truth of 
the text ; for not only have we, as a heritage of thought, 
all the sources of error which have prevailed in the 
past, but we have fresh discussions and seductive op- 
positions to the truth which belong especially to the 
present. In every age certain classes of minds have in- 
sisted that religion is itself the whole ; have merged their 
morality in their religion; have made all to consist in 
worship, in raptures, in meditation, in devout thought. 
When reminded of the commandments of God, their 
answer has been, " He whose heart is busy in commun- 



42 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

ing with God need give neither thought nor anxiety to the 
commandments of God. " They have forgotten morality 
in the extremity of their devotion to religion. And this 
you will find not only among the Eremites, out of whom 
monasticism grew; not only among the mystics, — the 
metaphysical and the pantheistic mystics of the Middle 
Ages, — but in our own day it bursts forth in ever new 
forms7 now in perfectionism, now in a boasted " inner 
life," now in some grand and unexpected discovery of an 
elevation toward which only the elect few can rise. 

On the other hand stands another extreme which 
belongs to all time, which merges religion in morality, 
which insists that the sum of all requirements is found 
in a concentrated attention of the mind upon the particu- 
larized duties of life. They tell us it is not worship to 
which man is called, so much as to work ; ever remind- 
ing us that he prays best who works best, ever thrusting 
before us the text of James, — which they misinterpret, 
— that " pure religion and undefiled before God and the 
Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their 
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. " 
Eeligion is lost sight of in the extreme attention paid 
to the minor duties of life. And in our times, new 
forms of opinion and speculation are directly tending 
toward a divorce of religion from morality. Thus every 
one who has observed the progress of Protestantism has 
noticed with something of alarm the extremes to which 
it has carried us. At the first, it grounded itself in the 
individualism of man. It rested upon the rights of con- 
science. It built itself solely upon individual convic- 
tions. It thrust aside priestly authority, and said to each 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 43 

man, " Stand up in thine own personality before God, and 
commune directly with Him whose child thou art. " 
This, as a fundamental principle, has been carried in our 
day to the extreme of personal independence, at the ex- 
pense, it might be said, of even Divine authority. 

As a reaction from this extreme, we see on all hands, 
both among the extremely earnest and honest, and among 
varied classes who have no distinct philosophical reason 
for their change, a rapid movement from the extreme of 
Protestantism to the extreme of Churchism, to that which 
seems to afford refuge, stability, that which antedated 
Protestantism, that, under whatever name, which comes 
with the claim of authority from the Most High God, 
superseding the right of private judgment, of the individ- 
ual conscience, and dictating to man what is requisite 
for commending himself to the Most High. Under 
varied forms, this has shown itself in different parts of 
our own country, — I may say over the whole civilized 
world. Nothing has been more apparent to the eyes of 
the observing than the rapidity of movement toward the 
restoration of mediaeval practices, of mediaeval forms of 
worship, of mediaeval forms of thought. And just so far 
as men are taught to transfer the sense of personal obliga- 
tion binding them to watchfulness and personal attention 
to the duties of life, just so far the danger is presenting 
itself of a divorce of religion from morality, of the old 
spirit and disposition unduly to exalt worship and to set 
it in the place of duty, in the place of stern activity. 

A more recent and reactionary movement, again, is the 
philosophy of the Physicists, under whatever name pre- 
sented; the philosophy of Evolution, regarding con- 



44 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

science itself as the product of human experience, moral 
laws as the deductions of human observation, everywhere 
setting forth the claim that morality is divisible from 
religion; that each human being, watchful of common 
effects, common sequences of action, may for himself dis- 
cover personal obligations which bind him to his fellow 
beings, bind him evermore to a watchfulness of himself, 
to the subjugation of his passions, to the exercise of 
authority over his own spirit. So that it is maintained 
not only that morality is a possibility independent of 
religion, but that the true morality of our time must be 
founded in a philosophy divorced from religion. 

Here, then, are two classes of teachers claiming atten- 
tion, — the one unintentionally divorcing religion from 
morality, and the other doing so upon philosophical prin- 
ciples. It becomes, therefore, a necessity to ask, What is 
the true relation of morality and religion ? Pray, what 
is religion other than our recognition of God and of our 
relation to Him ? What are the religions of the earth 
but the collected phenomena representative of the inner 
convictions of the human heart in respect to the Invisi- 
ble Power? What is morality but conformity to recog- 
nized obligations growing out of these inner convictions ? 
What are moral acts but attempted fulfilments of moral 
laws written, first of all, on the heart ? Can you separate 
the one from the other ? As well separate the circum- 
ference from its centre; as well separate the vascular 
system from the heart; as well separate the nervous 
system from the brain to which it reports itself, and from 
which it receives its directive power. Eeligion is that 
which surrounds and controls and vivifies morality. It 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 45 

is that which teaches us our obligations to God and our 
obligations to one another. Morality is that which 
assures, convinces us of our obligations, because we are 
what we are. 

But we must not forget that to the common apprehen- 
sion there are grades, or degrees, of morality. We do not 
forget that morality is simply conformity to law, and 
that the man who obeys law is a " moral " man. But the 
degrees of difference between a morality which is the 
prompting of supreme selfishness, and the morality which 
springs from a recognized obligation to the Supreme 
Being, are removed by an almost immeasurable distance. 
Thus, in one respect, he is a moral man who commits no 
theft. Not to steal, is in that respect to be moral ; not 
to commit any form of iniquity, is to be moral in respect 
to that kind of iniquity which is specified. So we might 
proceed to say that he is moral who is actuated solely by 
a fear of punishment ; to go to a lower deep than that, 
we might say " He is moral indeed, though simply intent 
on gratifying the most selfish principle of his nature. 
He is moral who commits no theft, though he every- 
where longs to possess what is not his own. " But he 
who is moral for reasons above selfish ends, for reasons 
above the legal fear of a gratification of his baser in- 
stincts, is certainly possessed of a morality of a better 
kind ; and ascending to that level which forgets the re- 
ward, forgets the penalty, which is ever intent upon the 
realization of the ideal being derived from the Archetypal 
Being, he is striving towards, and is rapidly acquiring, 
a morality of a vastly higher degree. So that when it is 
claimed that there are grades of morality without religion, 



46 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

it may not be denied ; we grant that there are moral men 
who are not religious men. But we do affirm that the 
highest form of morality is impossible when separated 
from the highest form of religion ; that a true morality 
is indivisible from a true religion. 

While we say this, we do not forget the persistent 
claim which is put forth on all sides in behalf of a 
morality which is said to be practised for its own sake. 
Thus we never cease to be reminded that a morality is 
possible which is grounded in Atheism ; that a morality 
is possible which is aimed at simply from a personal 
regard to morality itself. Pray, what is the meaning of 
this ? What is an act which is performed for its own 
sake ? What is that morality which a man is prompted 
to without a motive ? When a man says that a moral act 
is performed for its own sake, if he means anything, he 
must mean that it is for the benefits which that act is 
certain to confer on him. The motive is found in that 
which accompanies the act. Or, suppose he says that by 
morality he means virtue, — means the personal good and 
the personal power to be moral. Why do we seek that ? 
What mean we when we say we seek that for its own 
sake ? We seek it either because of the advantage it 
gives us, or, for the peace it brings us, the happiness which 
accompanies it, — some quality inseparable from that 
which we call virtue, inseparable from the act which we 
call moral ; that act is ever prompted by some beneficent 
result supposed to be connected with it. So that the 
boasted claim of a morality which is sought as its own 
end, is a morality which exists only as a mental fiction. 
It has no existence; it never did exist; it never can 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 47 

exist. There is no morality which is not accompanied 
by such qualities, such effects, such sequences, that he 
who is moral or virtuous expects in some sense to be 
benefited by them. Thus, when we speak of morality 
and religion, we speak not of two separate quantities, 
separate acts, separate modes of being, but of two sides 
of one great mode of existence. That man is religious 
who is truly moral, and that man is moral who is really 
religious. This will be seen, if we remember that the 
moral and religious nature of man are indivisible, that 
as component parts of man, they constitute one indi- 
visible whole. Consider what is called the rational 
nature of man. To be a rational being is to possess the 
power to discriminate between objects. Eeason itself is 
that power by which we distinguish between phenomena 
or qualities of phenomena. But he who is possessed of 
reason does not exercise it simply in distinguishing 
a straight line from a curved line, not simply in 
distinguishing between the proportions of figures, of 
dimension, of numbers ; but he exercises it also in a dis- 
crimination of the difference between means and ends. 
And reason distinguishes not merely between the qualities 
of objects, but between the qualities of acts. So that to 
be a rational being is to be possessed of a power by which 
we discriminate between acts as good or bad. In other 
words, there exists no man possessed of reason who is 
not also possessed of conscience. Conscience is reason 
directed to the discrimination of acts, — discrimination 
between the qualities of acts. Any attempt, therefore, 
so to separate the rational from the moral as to make 
them independent parts of man, fails of necessity. For 



48 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

I repeat that no man is so constituted that he distin- 
guishes merely between things. He distinguishes be- 
tween acts and between means as related to the ends 
sought in the acts. And not only is this true, but the 
moral nature w T hich underlies the intellectual rests upon 
the religious nature ; in other words, to be a moral being 
is to be a religious being. We cannot discriminate be- 
tween acts, between laws binding on the human being, 
unless we also recognize the religious obligations which 
underlie his moral nature. This is seen even in the 
word. What is meant by obligation ? What is meant 
by duty ? Duty to what and to whom ? Duty is not 
prudence. Obligation is not sagacity. When I look out 
into life as a man of business, when I look into society, 
and ask, with honest intention, how I can seek some 
indifferent end, I may exercise my reason only. But 
when I contemplate the relation of others, of society, to 
the end sought, my reason strikes down to the moral 
basis. And no man ever contemplates the right without 
feeling an instinctive desire to do the right. The obli- 
gation to obey the right is that which we distinguish 
as the quality of a religious being. The word religion 
signifies obligation ; so that the terminology running 
through all morality belongs also to religion ; the roots 
of all moral ideas are in the religious ideas of man. As 
phraseology belonging to ethics is essentially one with 
phraseology belonging to religion, so morality and religion 
are a unity, — indissoluble parts of one great whole in 
the spiritual nature of man. 

But we proceed again to say that morality and religion 
are indivisible because morality needs religion to supply 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 49 

itself with adequate motives. We have said that a moral 
act without a motive is impossible. It is the motive 
which constitutes the morality itself when you come to 
analyze it. We have recognized a superficial morality, 
which men practise and account moral, independent of 
motives. Look over the face of society, everywhere 
observant of the proprieties of life. You say it is a 
moral state of society. Lift the veil and ask the motives. 
Your morality is dissipated. Go step by step onward, 
and ask, " What is true morality ? " It is that which is 
founded on a true motive that will stand the test of 
analysis. 

What, then, are the motives which morality regards ? 
There are two classes of motives : one, where the motives 
ground themselves simply in the benefits conferred. This 
is utilitarianism, wherever you find it, under whatever 
guise, whether it be under the guise of religion, or 
under the guise of speculative philosophy. There is a 
vast amount of utilitarian philosophy under the guise of 
religion. That man who is moral simply from the fear 
of hell, has a kind of morality which is almost immoral 
when analyzed. That man who is moral merely from 
the desire of heaven, has only a microscopic amount of 
true morality. 

Now morality dictated by utilitarian ends is morality 
which has its origin in the individual himself, and the 
plane to which it can raise him is never higher than the 
level from which it begins. I look out into the future 
of my life and ask, " Why shall I shape my course in a 
given direction ? " and say to myself, " It is for the bene- 
fits I may derive. " But these benefits are according to 

4 



50 BACCALAUKEATE SERMONS. 

the dictates of my present perception of personal well- 
being. A utilitarian philosophy can never raise a man 
above the level on which it finds him. If men are raised 
in the mass, or as individuals, above the moral plane on 
which they began, it must be because the morality has 
some infused power, some infused life, some infused end 
higher than that which springs from human nature itself. 
Where do you find it aside from a true religion ? Where 
do you find it aside from the Being who, opening His 
hands, scatters unnumbered blessings upon the race ? 
Where do you find it aside from the Being who has 
opened His infinite heart and invited all to come and 
partake of His gracious bounty ? Here there is a moral- 
ity which calls the thought of the rational, moral being 
up to Him who is the Archetype of all. And that man 
who would construct to himself an ideal (as some of you, 
young gentlemen, have sought for that ideal in the year 
past), whence is he to derive it? The ideal man, the 
typical being ever to be set as an example, — where is he 
to be found ? Can such an ideal be constructed out of 
the human heart ? Is it a product of moral principles as 
deduced from observation ? Is it other than that Arche- 
typal idea which God Himself presents to us when He 
says to us, Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect ? Do you find it elsewhere in the world except 
in the Person of Him who stood among us, the faultless 
Ideal, the perfect Man, the Divine-human Being, em- 
bodying in Himself the morality which He taught in 
precept ? 

Religion, then, we have seen, is inseparable from 
morality because of the inseparable union of the moral 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 51 

and the religious natures in man, grounded each on a 

common basis, and because there is no true morality 

no true motive resulting in morality — aside from 
religion. 

One other consideration : the necessity of religion in 
order to the production of that kind of character which 
morality is intended to produce. What is that? Moral- 
ity is not for its own sake. Man is not required to be 
moral simply because morality will conduce to his 
present pleasure. Morality is for an end ; moral law is 
a discipline. As well might you have said in these suc- 
cessive years of study, " The lesson given to us is for its 
own sake. " There is either the luxury or the pain 
attendant upon the study of a difficult problem and the 
mastery of it. You have said, * It is for mental disci- 
pline ; it is for evoking mental power ; it is for training 
the whole being. " Just so with moral law ; it has an 
end. What is that end ? It is to give you the power to 
stand erect; it is to give you character. Morality is 
worthless except it shall result in the rounding out of a 
complete and harmonious personality. How is this to be 
produced ? Nothing is more simple and commonplace, 
whether in ethics or religion, than the statement that 
every man becomes like that object which occupies his 
supreme attention. That which is the object of your 
pursuit, whatever it may be, — if it is gain, if it is fame, 
if it is pleasure, — fame, gain, pleasure, each by reaction, 
produces a special type of character. So that the man 
whose thoughts revolve around a fortune has the charac- 
teristic stamp upon his very features; the man who is 
eager simply for the applause of men proclaims it in his 



52 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

eye, in the very step with which he walks among you. 
Look at him, from whatever point of view, you will see 
that all his thoughts are absorbed in commanding the 
homage of men. So he that presents before himself any 
other end, finds that the object in which his thoughts 
centre imparts to him its attributes. Where do you find 
the type of morality, the type of manhood, which you 
would make your end ? Is it to be found among the great 
men of antiquity ? Eun your eye over the lengthened list, 
and select the man that you would put before you as your 
typical ideal. There is not one of all the hosts ! Eun 
your eye along the lengthened line of patriarchs, priests, 
prophets, evangelists. All imperfect! One, and One 
only, stands among men a Moral Ideal, — that Being in 
whom our religion was embodied, through whom God 
spoke, in whom God was manifest on earth. In Him is 
morality. And as your thoughts turn to Him, as your 
mind rests on Him, as you meditate upon His virtues 
and ponder His words, insensibly the attributes of His 
noble and ennobling nature pass to you, and you are 
elevated and translated and transformed into the image 
of God. This alone has produced among men true 
morality, — a morality after which men have evermore 
striven. Socrates strove for it, and boasted of the daemon 
which the gods had granted to dwell in him, — a noble 
type, but not faultless. 

So we fall back, not simply upon speculation, we 
come back to revelation ; we oome back to that which has 
been verified in the experience of the race, that which 
here in Jesus Christ is furnished to you; and when I say 
Jesus Christ, I mean religion, the true religion, the 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 53 

religion of God given to man. In that do you find the 
basis of a morality, — a basis immovable as the founda- 
tions of the throne of God. 

Take, if you will, the type of character which the 
world has boasted of as the product of philosophy and 
not of religion, — the type of character presented to the 
rising generation as worthy of imitation, a type which 
is not, it is claimed, the product of a priestly religion, 
of the low standard of morality in the New Testament, 
but the product of a morality engendered by the spirit of 
modern science, fostered and built up into harmonious pro- 
portions, — what is the type of character thus presented ? 
Beautiful, it may be, to behold in the distance, clear cut 
in outline, like the distant mountain as it stands against 
the horizon, snow-capped, serene, cold — not human. 
Take it at a nearer view, a morality chiselled, lifeless, 
as colorless as marble, as pulseless and wanting in 
human sympathies as the stone itself, — a morality that 
may claim to be touched by no stain of vice, but a 
morality wanting in the sweet sympathies of life ; a 
morality that stands serene and elevated, but a morality 
that, like the glacier, recognizes the immutable barriers 
of law, and compresses and grinds itself slowly down 
towards the abyss, claiming to be faultless, but as 
wanting in sympathy as the soulless corpse. Which is 
the nobler type of morality, this, presented in our day 
aside from religion, unloving and unlovable, or that 
which is grounded in religion, which recognizes God as 
the Father of all, recognizes the brotherhood of man in 
his lowliest estate, recognizes the duty of sacrificing 
self, not for a name, not for fame, not for a brilliant 



54 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

discovery in science, but simply to bring back the wan- 
dering sons of God to a common Father. Which is the 
higher? Which is the nobler? 

But there is another method by which the inseparable 
connection of morality and religion may be vindicated. 
History has established the truth that morality flourishes 
only as it is grounded in religion, and that religion is 
useful to man only as it coincides with and builds upon 
the immutable truths of morality. 

In no age of the past do you find that a nation has 
prospered, that society has been stable, and all the fruits 
of good government have been manifest, unless the in- 
fluence of a religious principle has been widely felt 
among the people. Just in proportion to the clearness 
and the stability of the religious convictions of the 
people, has been their progress and their safety. Just 
so soon as the religious convictions have become unset- 
tled, just so soon the foundations of morality begin to 
decay, whether it be in ancient Borne, or in the later 
days of France, whether you go to the modern city of 
Calcutta, or into the narrow walks of the cities of our 
own land. Just in proportion as men have begun to lose 
their faith in God, their faith in the existing religion, 
just in that proportion have immoralities sprung up, 
vices become common, collapses of character become 
frightfully frequent. So that, looking abroad over our 
land, when the inquiry arises, Why are men high in 
religious positions making shipwreck of character ? — the 
answer is, simply because they have divorced their re- 
ligion from morality, because they have forgotten that God 
appeals to them individually, to their individual con- 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 55 

sciences, requiring them to be conformed to right, simply 
because right is founded in the eternal nature of God. 
When men come to suppose that morality has its origin 
in propriety, when they come to reason that moral obli- 
gations rest upon man only because of the established 
usages of society, then does society become unstable and 
the future uncertain ; wrecks of character become fre- 
quent, and trusts are everywhere betrayed. But when 
morality is simply the product of immutable and implicit 
faith in God, then is character the resemblance, the re- 
flection of that God in whom trust is reposed. 

Young gentlemen, you have reached one distinctive 
stage in your career. It seems but a few years when 
your thoughts roamed as freely and idly as the air is 
now moving among the leaves of yonder trees. The 
future seemed to open out through a boundless vista; 
the very sunlight awoke you to activity. But the prison- 
house of life has been gathering slowly around you. The 
discipline of study, the discipline of thought, have brought 
you to serious reflection. And as you anticipate the 
future, the question comes to you, " On what am I to 
build ? On what shall my character be reared ? " You 
remember that moral law is enjoined upon you, addresses 
itself to you, not as a deduction from human observation, 
but that it proclaims to you what is wrought into the 
very constitution of your being; proclaims to you what 
is true of that Being in whose image you are made, and 
from whom you come forth. You have come to under- 
stand that duty is inexorable, that you can as soon 
escape from your own personal consciousness as escape 
from moral obligation. You have also come to under- 



56 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

stand that that Being who is invisible, everywhere 
present, speaks to you, not to the outward ear, but to the 
ear of the soul. God envelops you with His presence 
as the atmosphere does ; your religious nature respires in 
the conscious presence of God, and your moral nature 
receives its activity, is invigorated by communion with 
that Being from whom all law emanated, from whom 
you have derived your being, in whom " you live, and 
move, and have your being," unto whom you must at 
the last return. 

Let me remind each one of you here and now, that you 
will succeed in life just in proportion as you recognize 
your moral obligations to yourself, to your fellow-beings, 
and to God — to God, first of all ; to man as the child of 
that God who is your Father ; and to yourself as a being 
who, related to your fellow-beings, will be useful to 
others, and will be benefited by others, just in proportion 
to the control which you exercise over your own spirit. 
Build, therefore, each man, humbly, in the fear of God, 
under the Great Taskmaster's eye, because what you 
build, you build forever. It is not for a day, not for a 
year, not for a generation. As you sow, you reap. As 
you treasure up in your mind and heart, so will you 
travel endlessly with that acquisition, be it good or bad. 
You can never shake off what you receive in thought, in 
communing with yourself and with God. I charge you, 
therefore, as you go out into life, trust not to self, trust 
not to human guidance. There is one Being and One 
only, as I have said, to whom you can look. You need 
look to Him in no mystical sense. Look to Him not 
merely in the meeting-house, but look to Him in the 



THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 57 

market-place, look to Him when you stand at the bar 
pleading for the life of your fellow-being, or for his 
property, or reputation, better than life. Look to that 
Being when you stand by the bed of the sick, — that 
Being who alone can sustain the heart when it sinks and 
the strength when it fails ; look to Him always and 
everywhere. 

The Jesus Christ of the Bible is the Christ of human- 
ity, not of the cloister, not of the priesthood; not the 
Christ whose benefits are to be conferred by a hierarchy. 
He is your Christ and my Christ ; He is the Christ of all 
men. And I speak not as one who would set forth to 
you a religion distinct from morality. What one of you 
does not aspire to be moral ? What one of you does not 
aspire to build up a character which God and men may 
look on with approval ? What one of you would not say, 
" Give me a peaceful conscience, self -approval, though it 
be accompanied with poverty, persecution, and death ? " 
You will have it when you look up serenely and say, 
" Keep me, God ! " and as you look into your heart and 
say, " Christ Jesus, the Saviour of men, the Guide of 
men, the Euler of society, be Thou my Saviour. " I 
commend, therefore, the Christ, in no narrow sense, as 
One who will put into your heart a hope which you may 
hide away. Bather, say that Christ — say it with an 
open face, say it by the wayside, say it in the mart, say 
it in the hall of legislation, say it at the bar, say it in 
the medical profession, say it wherever you are — say 
that Jesus Christ is that Being whom God sent to recon- 
struct society, sent into this world to teach men politics, 
teach men law, teach men all human duties ; because He, 



58 BACCALAUREATE SEKMONS. 

and He alone, of all beings on this earth, represented in 
His own Person the perfect union of religion and 
morality. 

I warn you, then, do not divorce your religion from 
morality. Do not go into the sanctuary on Sunday and 
chant your praises and say your empty prayers, and there 
leave your religion. Take it with you wheresoever you 
go. Build on it daily ; never be ashamed, wherever or 
before whomsoever you are, to bow your knee as an 
humble worshipper, and say, " Father, God, keep me, " for 
this is your highest exaltation. Be truly religious, and 
you will be moral. Without religion, your morality will 
in the end prove a snare and a deception. God be with 
you, and Jesus Christ be in you, a Power to keep you, 
and the Hope of a glory to come. 



INWAED UPKIGHTNESS. 

As for me I ivill walk in mine integrity. 

Psalms xxvi., part of verse 11. 

THESE are not the words of a self-righteous man ; they 
are not the empty boast of one who had but a super- 
ficial knowledge of his own heart and its plague ; they 
were the deliberate utterance of one whose unceasing 
prayer was, " Search me, God, and try me, and see if 
there be any wicked way in me. " It was the utterance 
of one who had known some of the bitterest trials to 
which man in this life is subject. His faith had been 
put to many a fiery test, and when he uttered these 
words, his own son, dishonoring the household of his 
father, had set himself deliberately to plot treason in the 
state. The heart of the nation wavered between the 
destinies of the son and of the father. Some of the 
father's most tried friends had proved wanting in this 
day of trial and extremity. The state was shaken to its 
centre ; and as the Psalmist surveyed the desolation of his 
household and his nation, he fortified himself with the 
declaration with which the Psalm begins, " Judge me, 
Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity. " He nar- 
rates the perils that surround him, and exclaims, in the 
words which I have read as the text, " I will walk in 
mine integrity. " 



60 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

And you will distinguish here between the personal 
integrity of which he was conscious and the perfection 
of character to which the self-righteous man lays claim. 
The Psalmist says, not " I am faultless in my demeanor. 
I have been perfect and upright in all my course. " On 
the other hand he says, in the Psalm immediately pre- 
ceding this, and evidently written on the same occasion, 
" Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. " He acknowl- 
edged his transgression and his sins. He recognized the 
national calamities as the just consequences of his 
offences, and yet looking within, he says, " I have walked 
in mine integrity ; and as for me, though my tried friends 
betray me, though mine own son lifts up his heel against 
me — as for me I will walk in mine integrity. " It is 
possible for a man who is cognizant of defects in charac- 
ter to be distinctly conscious of an uprightness of pur- 
pose. It is possible for one who recognizes many a bald 
defect, many a deep, and almost incurable fault of per- 
sonal character, yet to look calmly up into the face of 
heaven, and challenge the Divine scrutiny, to claim for 
himself rectitude of purpose, uprightness of spirit, fidel- 
ity of heart, unswerving loyalty to the Lord, who is 
supreme over all. 

It is this conscious personal integrity that is the sub- 
ject of our thought this afternoon, and the need of it, — 
its need in order to personal character, to completeness 
of character, to holiness of character, to a stable outward 
morality. 

Inward integrity of purpose is requisite to outward 
conformity to the laws of God. Every man's character 
is the direct expression of his inward and ruling pur- 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 61 

pose. Character, whatever may be the influence of ex- 
ternal circumstances, receives its determining force from 
the inner spirit. Every man is according to his thought. 
There is no such distinction, as we oftentimes hear, as 
that which is signified when we speak of " being " and 
" doing " as if the words were representative of different 
and distinct qualities. Every man is what he does ; and 
every man does strictly in accordance to what in his inner 
being he is. And this outward expression of character 
will be complete and symmetrical, or defective and dis- 
torted, according to the simplicity or duplicity of the 
purpose within. He who is conscious of a single, pure, 
and upright purpose, sooner or later manifests that 
inward integrity to all men, and whosoever will, may 
read, and none can mistake. He who looks superficially 
even, but looks frequently, fails not in the end to deter- 
mine the inward character. The outward is the expres- 
sion of the inward. And in so saying we do not forget 
that external circumstances have their natural influence, 
— that birth and education affect naturally and neces- 
sarily the inward spirit. But the fixed inward purpose 
overcomes all that can be inherited, overcomes all that 
can be brought to bear from education. And still more, 
this interior purpose is dominant over all external cir- 
cumstances. If it be true that the external forms the 
interior, if it be true that every man is simply what 
the circumstances of climate and soil have made him, 
as our modern philosophy teaches, then is it equally 
true that there is no such thing as a conscience in 
man — no such thing as a moral law according to which 
conscience controls the conduct of men. But as well 



62 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

might you say that the varying climates, as you ascend 
from the base to the summit of iEtna, which clothe its 
base with fields of green, with groves of orange and with 
teeming vineyards, which covers the middle course with 
deep and thickening forests, whose chill atmosphere 
crowns the summit with perpetual snow — as well might 
you say that these varying degrees of climate form the 
mountain and control it, as to affirm that the circum- 
stances of a man determine the character of the man. 
As it is not the climate that forms the surface of iEtna, 
or that builds it up, or that sends forth the desolating 
lava, so it is not the external surroundings, nor climate, 
nor society, not inherited tendency nor physical pecu- 
liarities that make the man ; but it is the inner thought, 
the ruling purpose, that which is conscious in the mind 
as the end and aim of life, that is stronger than all 
which is inherited, stronger than all that comes from 
without. It is the man's strength, linked with that 
of the Almighty, which makes him supreme. And this 
is the inward uprightness of which the Psalmist was con- 
scious when he said : " I have walked in mine integrity, " 
and " I will walk in mine integrity. " 

We do not forget that an external thought may fasten 
upon a man, just as the busy insect fastens upon the 
branch of a fruit-tree, bringing forth the excrescence 
which may destroy it. A thought fastening upon a man 
may shape and mould some of the constitutional pecu- 
liarities of mind and heart. But to do this it must be 
congenial with the inner and ruling purpose. No 
imagination can fasten itself upon the heart or upon 
the mind of a youth and draw him except it shall be 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 63 

in harmony with the inner spirit that rules him ; and 
an evil thought which you in your impotence may say 
has been injected by your friend, is a thought which 
must become cherished, and must be in harmony with 
your ruling spirit, before it can shape and mould your 
character. 

What is thus true of the character of the individual, is 
equally true of the character of the nation. So I mention 
to you as a second reason, the relation of this personal 
integrity to national character and institutions. The 
nation, from whatever point of view you contemplate it, 
differs in no essential particular from an individual. It 
is in a sense a person composed of many individualities ; 
the type of national character takes its current and its 
shaping from the individualities that compose the nation. 
According, therefore, to the individual character and the 
individual purpose, will be the national type of charac- 
ter — will be also the national institutions. And the 
national institutions, so formed, manifest themselves 
again in the private walks of life. And in free govern- 
ments the relation between the public institution and 
the more private life is very intimate. The relation 
between those who are known as leaders, or guides, or 
examples in society, and those who constitute the great 
mass of the national life is an inseparable one. That 
which rules the heart of the nation manifests itself in 
those whom accident of position or the careful training 
of education may exalt into places of distinction. They 
who are known in popular governments as leaders, as 
rulers, are at once the exponents of the public life and of 
the national ideas and spirit, and reciprocally, are the 



64 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

creators of these ideas and spirit. There is a close and 
inseparable correlation ; they are at once the creatures and 
creators. The people find the reflection of themselves in 
their rulers ; the rulers by reaction intensify and deepen 
the qualities of the ruled. So that he who would know 
the character of the national government may read it in 
those who are the recognized indicators of the popular 
life ; and they who would know what is the national 
destiny or the spirit of a people may read it in the char- 
acter of those who are its representative law -makers. 
Each is the counterpart of the other. 

And in a nation where intellect comes prominently 
forward, defects in national life become all the more con- 
spicuous and all the more dangerous. Educated men 
are, in a sense, representatives of the popular mind. The 
man who, in our day, enters upon a course of public educa- 
tion, gives hostages to the public that there shall be a 
right use of the knowledge he acquires and the mental 
discipline that he receives; he gives a pledge to the 
public that he will be an example to the mass. Why ? 
He is supposed to have a wider, as well as a profounder 
view of life ; he has ascended the hill of observation 
higher than the multitudes that are around him ; he has 
looked more narrowly into the laws of his own being 
and the laws of the national life than his fellowmen. 
And more than all, he is supposed by virtue of his intel- 
ligence to be capable of self-control above the majority of 
his fellowmen. When, therefore, the people are misrep- 
resented, there is naturally and inevitably a shock to the 
public sentiment. No matter what may be the position, 
he who betrays a trust, he who violates a moral obliga- 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 65 

tion, he who turns the opportunities of official life to 
private gain, thereby wounds the public conscience. 
Doubtless there were other Chancellors prior to Lord 
Bacon who had been approached by clients who had busi- 
ness in the High Court of Chancery. But when the 
great Chancellor was known to have held out his smooth 
palm to receive successive bribes ; when in the High 
Court of Judicature he had been proved guilty, and when 
in humble penitence and submission he acknowledged 
the indictment, the whole national life seemed for the 
instant to be arrested. The House of Lords professed to 
be, and doubtless were profoundly shocked. The whole 
nation raised its voice in indignation. Why ? Simply 
because the heart of the nation had not been corrupted. 
There had been here and there individual instances of 
unfaithfulness. But when a great and marked example 
was manifest of one who had betrayed a sacred trust, one 
who had shown an inward want of moral integrity, then 
did not only the House of Lords, but the House of Com- 
mons and the whole nation justify the severity of the 
sentence, than which none was perhaps ever severer; 
only this could satisfy their deep sense of justice and 
uprightness and official honor. How much greater the con- 
demnation in a free nation ! Doubtless Benedict Arnold 
and Aaron Burr were not the only men into whose 
minds thoughts of treason in the early struggles and 
tumults of our country, entered. There is no evidence 
that any others ever cherished it, ever deliberated it. 
They did ; and their names are synonyms for the pro- 
founclest infamy. They have sunk to a degradation from 
which no investigation, and no criticism, and no charity 

5 



66 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

ever can raise them. "Why ? Simply because all over this 
broad continent there were individuals who said not only 
that they themselves would " walk in integrity, " but who 
demanded that men who had been intrusted with places 
of responsibility should themselves be men of integrity. 
There is that wrought into the national life which no 
humiliation and no condonation of the crime can ever 
satisfy. Bear it in mind ever, — that there is that in- 
wrought into the human soul which will not be pacified, 
which cannot be pacified, when men deliberately sell 
justice, allow themselves to be corrupted, and by their 
example seek to corrupt others. What is thus true of 
the nations in times past is true in our day. The heart 
of this great nation is not corrupt. The multitudes of 
the people are not deficient in personal integrity. And 
when any one in a high place of trust proves wanting, 
great as may be the pity, profound as may be the com- 
passion, yet deep and ineradicable in every heart is the 
conviction that as a man sows so should he reap. He 
who has " treasured up thoughts of iniquity in his heart" 
must take his lot with the iniquitous, and go down to 
posterity stigmatized as a betrayer of trust, as one unfit 
to be recognized as a citizen of a great republic. 

And thus we are led to another reason why this per- 
sonal integrity is requisite. In the private and public 
weal, or happiness, is found a reason for it. What I 
have said thus far relates to the value of character to the 
individual and the demand for it in the nation. But 
there is also another and equally great necessity for it in 
the earnest yearning of all hearts for satisfaction, — 
satisfaction with self, satisfaction with the issues of life. 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 67 

We may disguise it as we will 5 but there is after all a 
deep and settled yearning in all hearts for contentment, 
for peace, for happiness. And let us broadly distinguish 
between what is represented by these several synonyms 
and mere pleasure. He who seeks simply personal 
gratification in his daily life is certain to fail of it. He 
who makes his own personal gratification the sole end 
of his being, will be certain in each successive year to 
reckon upon what will result in an utter disappointment. 
No mortal can set that end before him with the assur- 
ance that he will ever reach it, any more than he who 
sets out deliberately any day of his life to say, " Now 
I will be happy to-day ; w he will find before the day 
has closed that he has encountered one of the wretch- 
edest of all the days of his being. Contentment, hap- 
piness, comes unbidden ; but it comes as the inevitable 
sequence of an honest, earnest purpose to fulfil obli- 
gation. He who fixes his eye upon the stern require- 
ments of law, law as he finds it in his own mind, law 
as he finds it asserted in his own conscience, will for a 
certainty find in each successive day a peace which 
no outward disappointment can arrest, a quietude which 
no external circumstance can disturb, simply because 
it is the natural result of that which is deepest in his 
own nature, his own constitution. 

Look, if you will, at the closing years of the great 
philosopher and chancellor to whom I have referred. 
Did ever words more piteous come from human lips than 
fell from his? Out of the depths of that humiliation 
not only did he deprecate the royal wrath, not only did 
he seek to propitiate the nation, but deliberately did he 



68 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

write the bitterest of self -accusations, — the most unhappy 
of mortals, all the result of his own deliberate violation 
of this requirement, — the requirement of the inappeasa- 
ble conscience, — integrity of life. Failing in that, he 
had lost all. In vain did men speak of the glory of his 
reputation, the greatness of the results to man, of the 
philosophy that he had propounded. In vain did men 
seek to calm the troubled spirit. 

Look at another English statesman, one who, after a 
life of honest toil, at the close of his days, was smitten 
as few men in public life have been smitten. The hand 
of death snatched away a son on whom he had lavished 
a father's affections, in whom were centred a father's 
hopes and a father's pride. When Edmund Burke drew 
near the close of his life, and the men against whom, in 
the name of England, he had drawn the sword of justice, 
men against whom he had planted himself, and against 
whom, with his great eloquence, he had pleaded for jus- 
tice, — when these men turned against him, when men in 
high places and low sought each to avenge his fancied 
wrong, the great statesman, in the unapproachable dig- 
nity of his self-conscious rectitude, could look out over 
the nation and look up into high heaven and utter words 
fit to be inscribed in letters of gold. These were the words 
of a man who had known what it was to serve, not self, 
but his sovereign and his God. 

So might you find scattered along over the annals of 
the nation upright, heroic souls, who, suffering under 
calamity, deserted by friends, alone in the world, poor 
in this world's goods, were yet rich and at peace with 
themselves in the consciousness of having served God 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 69 

and the right. You will find them now in the private 
walks of life, and in the public places of the nation. 
They are men who have found in this conscious rectitude 
what no fortune can equal, what no reputation can off- 
set, ■ — men who, when they shall reach the conclusion 
of life, will not ask for the popular estimate, will not 
inquire what is the reward that the nation is about to 
bestow upon them, but who will look up into the serene 
heavens and say, " I have served my God, and I am con- 
tent. I have sacrificed personal ends for the common 
weal, and I know that the reward is certain. " 

So also of national existence. There may be great 
national prosperity, there may be boundless gain, there 
may be victory over opposing nations, there may be what 
men account the supreme ascendancy among the nations 
of the earth. Yet there may be wanting this personal 
integrity of rulers and personal integrity of the private 
citizen. And I ask, Are they a free people ? We in our 
great national struggle have overcome a gigantic wrong ; 
we have torn up by the roots a long-planted and deep- 
seated national wrong and outrage upon our common 
humanity; we have erased it. We boast ourselves of 
being a free people, a great people. And yet are we 
free, except as we are possessors of this conscious recti- 
tude of purpose, this uprightness of spirit ? Are we 
free ? There are various kinds of bondage. There is the 
bondage of the outward fetter; there is the bondage 
of the inward spirit; there is a bondage which comes 
from the love of gain, the love of pleasure. We may 
be assured that the national heart is not corrupted by 
any of the external circumstances of gain — of tempta- 



70 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

tion. That which makes a people bondsmen is that 
which rules in their hearts. 

" There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear 
Than his who breathes, by floor and roof and wall 
Pent in, a tyrant's solitary Thrall ; 
'T is his who walks abroad in the open air, 
One of a nation who within their hearts 
Must wear their fetters in their souls." 

I will mention but one other reason for this need. It 
is found in the constitutional laws under which all men 
exist. What I have said thus far might be easily ex- 
plained on the most common utilitarian principles. We 
might affirm that a nation should be upright simply for 
the advantages of good reputation, national prosperity, 
national happiness. There is something deeper than this. 
There are moral laws wrought into the very constitution 
of the moral being, so that it is not a matter of reward 
or penalty, but a matter of absolute and inevitable neces- 
sity of nature, that every man must live strictly ac- 
cording to the laws of his own being, that he who shall 
conform to these laws will find the inward peace that he 
seeks, and he who violates these laws will find that, by 
an inevitable necessity, the penalty is inwrought, is as 
inevitable as his own personal identity, and can be no 
more escaped than existence itself. To be is to be held 
by these laws. Now these moral laws belonging to every 
individual are equally operative in the state. So that 
whatever may be the external condition, whatever may 
be the surroundings of an individual or nation, whatever 
may be the general expectation or fear, certain it is that 
to do right is attended by its own inevitable conse- 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 71 

quences. To do wrong is equally followed by its own 
inevitable results. He then that will look within him- 
self will find that these laws are part and parcel of his 
own being. You, young gentlemen, who have for the 
past years studied and looked into these principles, have 
found, like older and farther-seeing minds, that the 
moral laws which belong to the personal being, which 
are part and parcel of the personal existence, bring with 
them, by a slow but by the surest of all natural sequences, 
the good or evil which must result from your seeing and 
your choosing and your doing. Impossible is it that any 
man escape them. 

But you will ask me, " Supposing what has thus been 
said to be true, what is the method of acquiring and 
retaining this conscious integrity ? By what means can 
any individual become possessor of it ? By what means 
can he retain possession of it ? " These are practical 
questions. Varied and conflicting answers are presented 
in our time. The claim of no inconsiderable portion of 
the would-be public instructors of our day is that the 
moral teachings of the " popular religion, " as it is called, 
have not been tributary to the public morality, as they 
should be. And it is declared to be one of the signifi- 
cant signs of our times that the highest teachers of phy- 
sical science, that the accredited apostles of the new 
gospel, are models of character, examples for public guid- 
ance ; that they are men who will not steal ; that they 
are men who will not lie ; that they are men who will 
not betray trusts. And the explanation of the claimed 
superiority of character which is presented is said to be 
that it is the natural product of the recognition of the 



72 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

inviolability of physical laws; whereas, we are told 
that the " popular religion" represents law as something 
variable, — law which is flexible, law which is enacted 
for special ends, and may be enforced or repealed accord- 
ing to the supposed will of the law-maker. This, it is 
asserted, is destructive of public morality. And if you 
recognize their explanation of the " popular religion * as 
just, the charge must be accepted as true ; because noth- 
ing is more destructive of public morality than the sup- 
posed flexibility of law. A man who supposes that he 
may transgress to-day and to-morrow, and after a suffi- 
cient explanation or apology, be restored to fullness of 
fellowship with his fellowmen, be restored to a full 
birthright and the kingdom of God, who is taught that 
he may sin to-day and be righteous to-morrow, is a man 
who is directly decoyed into transgression. And if that 
be the preaching of our time, or the teaching of our relig- 
ion, then it is pernicious. But is the charge a just one ? 
Is this founded in truth ? What is our religion ? It 
does tell you that there is a possibility of escape from 
transgression. Physical science furnishes no escape. 
Physical science tells you that law — like the law of 
gravitation — moves unrelentingly, grinding into finest 
powder the man that encounters its action. Moral law 
also is invariable. It is inflexible ; it is as immovable 
as the law of gravitation. God, the Almighty, cannot 
arrest it. He does not arrest it. But God, the Al- 
mighty, provides what physical science does not recognize 
or know. It is the possibility of recovery from trans- 
gression ; it is the possibility of being reinstated. But 
the " popular religion" is not a religion which tells you 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 73 

that you can transgress to-day and be reinstated to- 
morrow, and transgress the day following and be rein- 
stated at pleasure. It is not a religion that tells you 
that Christianity is a contrivance to cheat justice; that 
it is a contrivance to arrest penalty. On the other hand, 
where in the universe of God do you find a clearer enun- 
ciation of moral law, a more emphatic declaration of its 
inviolability, than you find in the teachings of this 
same Jesus Christ, whose religion has been denied? 
What says He ? Why, " The heavens and the earth, 
which you Jews suppose to be immovable, shall pass 
away ; the eternal hills, as you call them, shall be re- 
moved, but not one jot, not one tittle of the law can 
fail. " Christianity is not a contrivance to show how to 
avoid law. It is a re-enactment of it; it is a re- 
inforcement of it; it proclaims a hell eternal, and a 
heaven eternal. And while it so proclaims, it tells you 
that he who transgresses, though he be saved by Jesus 
Christ, bears with that Christ the irrevocable penalties of 
his violations of moral law. We do not escape ; and it 
is only because an Almighty Being has descended and 
put His infinite shoulder under this great burden of 
human guilt that any one of us can awake with the con- 
sciousness of violated law, and in our sympathy with 
Him who died for us, fulfil that law. It is not abol- 
ished in any true sense ; it is abolished only in a Jewish 
and external sense ; it is re-enacted ; it is written on the 
very heart ; it is incorporated into the being ; it becomes 
part and parcel of the person. Christianity, then, instead 
of being what certain teachers of the new gospel would 
tell us, — instead of being a contrivance to escape, — is a 



74 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

contrivance to fulfil. And this New Testament of ours 
teaches us that the design of it was to show how God 
might be just, — just in inflicting the utmost degree of 
penalty on every human being on His footstool, and yet 
justify the man renewed in Christ Jesus. God enforces 
law, — enforces it on you, enforces it on me. You never 
can escape it. It is wrought into the very fibre of your 
being, and you must bear its penalty here and hereafter ; 
and in bearing it you will be enabled to escape only in 
that Being who, omnipotent, took upon Himself the 
burden of human guilt, and could say unto you and me, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. " 

That is our Christianity ; and if you ask how you shall 
obtain it, I reply that you will attain it, not by wrap- 
ping yourself in the conceit of your own intellectual 
strength and saying, " I see the law and I will conform to 
it. " You see the law ! You look up into the heavens 
and see the Supreme Majesty from whom all law ema- 
nates. Before Him you may say with the Psalmist, 
" Judge me, God ; try me ; I have walked in mine 
integrity. But help me ; pardon my iniquity, for it is 
great. " This is Christianity, whether taught by David 
or by Paul. This was the Christianity of the early days 
of the Gospel, the Christianity of the Middle Ages ; it is 
the Christianity of our own time. And if you ask me 
how you shall acquire it, I say to you, " Just as it was 
acquired of old. " If you ask me how you shall preserve 
it, I reply, " Preserve it as it was preserved of old. " 
It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. The 
lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposal thereof is 



. INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 75 

from the Lord. What one of us, looking at himself and 
at his surroundings in society, can say, " I am equal to the 
day" ? What one of us, looking at himself with the 
Almighty, may not say, " God is on my side, and whom 
shall I fear ? " With this conscious integrity, you may 
look up into the heavens and say, " God is my Father. 
I am reconciled to Him. Who is he that shall bring any 
accusation against me ? " 

You will find it, then, as every man has found Chris- 
tianity, not in private strength of intellect, not in self- 
conceit, but in humbleness of heart, leaning upon that 
God whose pity is over all, whose compassion fails not, 
who hears no cry that He does not answer, to whom no 
mortal lips utter a petition and there comes not back an 
answer of peace and rest. 

Young Gentlemen of the Senior Class : The day that at 
the outset of your college life seemed so remote, has 
arrived. While you have been busily engaged in your 
pursuits, the hastening months have passed by, and the 
day which seemed so distant is now here. All the good 
and all the evil that you have learned in these four years 
is sealed up for eternity. As you have sown, so, God 
help you, you must reap. There are various days which 
form epochs in your career. None, perhaps, in your life, 
however long it may be, will be more marked than the 
day on which you close your college career. Other days 
may shed a more decisive influence upon your future 
course, but none will be looked back to with more of the 
feelings of gratification or regret, than the day in which 
you bid adieu to college. 



76 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Varied have been the lessons of these four years. Each 
year there came a voice from the unseen world that said 
to you, " Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think 
not the Son of Man cometh. " You had run only the 
first stadium of your course when Lincoln, who was 
abreast of the foremost of you as a scholar and as a Chris- 
tian man, was snatched in an instant from the fulness of 
life to death. You had entered upon your second year, 
and Mathewson, sober-minded, earnest in purpose, grave 
in demeanor, the picture of health and strength, wearied 
and laid him down to die. In the midst of the busy 
thoughts of your Junior year, Ballou, wearying on a 
winter's day, turned aside to rest, and the Angel of 
Death called him from life. You entered upon your 
Senior year, — it was the last year of your course, — and 
Greene, inferior to no one of you in scholarship, noble 
in every trait of character, faithful in every relation, 
earnest in purpose, high in hope, turned aside from the 
course, and death took him. Four of your number in 
the four years have preceded you to the other world. 
These are solemn lessons for you to think of standing 
where you do to-day. Who of you during the next year 
shall bow his head and close his eyes upon the light of 
life? Young gentlemen, are you ready for it? What 
is life ? What are all its hopes ? What is scholarship, 
valuable as it is? What is anything you can set before 
you in life, compared with this inward rectitude of pur- 
pose, which I now, here in the presence of these specta- 
tors and of Almighty God, charge you to make yourselves 
possessors of. Take it into your hearts and say, looking 
up into high heaven, " God helping me, I never will 



INWARD UPRIGHTNESS. 77 

dishonor the college that gave me my education. I never 
will dishonor the mother that bore me. In an age of 
corruption, in an age of recreancy, in an age of luxury, 
my first aim shall be personal integrity. With un- 
stained hands, with an uncorrupted heart, with an un- 
swerving faith, trusting in the power of Almighty God, 
and in the grace of Jesus Christ, I will stand firmly, 
I will quit myself like a man, I will be faithful unto 
the end. " 

And it is not inappropriate that I remind you of the 
words with which He who alone can keep you in life, 
ended His earthly mission, when, after a life of sorrows, 
He said, looking up to heaven, " I have finished the work 
Thou gavest- me to do. " Christ was then exalted. His 
Apostle, also, who followed in His footsteps, though it 
may be remotely, said, " I have fought a good fight, I 
have finished my course, I have kept the faith. " Young 
gentlemen, can you name any end in life preferable to 
that, to be sought after ? In the providence of God some 
of you may be called to places of high trust, — perhaps 
to administer justice ; perhaps to plead at the bar of jus- 
tice ; perhaps to stand in the name of God as a teacher of 
religion ; perhaps to be a teacher of the young. Wher- 
ever you are, I adjure you, be true to yourselves, true to 
your own consciences, true to that Christ who is able 
to help and save each one of you, to that God without 
whose blessing life at the best is wretchedness, is noth- 
ingness, is despair. 

May the good providence of God protect you many 
years, keeping each of you by His mighty power, through 
faith, unto the salvation that is ready to be revealed. 



NATUKE AND CLAIMS OF MOEAL LAW. 

Who hast the form of knowledge and of truth in the law. 

Romans ii., part of the 20th verse. 

TO the ancient Jew, the law of Moses was declaratory 
of real and eternal truth. It contained no error, 
because it proceeded from an omniscient mind ; it was 
founded upon immutable right, because dictated by a 
Being of infinite justice ; it could not fail of being en- 
forced, because it had been enacted by a Being of infinite- 
power. It was sufficient to the Jew that it was the 
declared will of God. He asked no questions, but sub- 
mitted as to absolute authority. But in process of 
time, the question arose, " Why the laws ? " To devout 
men, the answer was sufficient, " It is the law of God. " 
But the inquiry was still legitimate, " For what end ? " 
Bational beings act from rational considerations, and the 
query was ever arising, " For what rational ends has God 
enacted moral law ? " Later clays and inquiries of the 
newest stamp rule out the question " Why ? " as irrele- 
vant and unanswerable. They tell us that law proceeds 
not from the will of an Infinite Law-giver, but from the 
personal nature of those to whom the laws are addressed. 
Moral laws, we are told by the latest teachers, are simply 
the accumulated experiences of the race ; that law speaks 
not the mind of an Infinite and All-wise Being, not the 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 79 

mind of an Infinite Father, — God, — but the mind of the 
endlessly succeeding generations, — the father-man. So 
that law, they tell us, is not a transcript of the divine 
character, but of the human ; law reveals what man is, 
they assure us, and not so much what God is, or what 
God determines. This is the teaching of science ; and 
assuredly among all the results of modern science none 
stands out more conspicuously to the eye of the observ- 
ing than the flood of light shed upon the moral teachings 
of the Bible. It was once sufficient to meet the moral 
declarations of the word of God by the assertion, " They 
are arbitrary ; it is arbitrary and unjust in God to visit 
the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the 
third and the fourth generation ; unjust in God to sweep 
from the earth the iniquitous races to give place for better 
ones. " Modern science dissipates all this by the law of 
heredity, which teaches us that hereditary evil is a first 
truth, and that the iniquities of the fathers are visited 
upon the children to the third and the fourth generations 
by the simple law of heredity, and not by the imposition 
of infinite power. We have now come to understand that 
laws are not forces impressed upon matter, as the horse is 
held in subjection, by the bit and bridle of the rider. 
Law is not something externally impressed; it is con- 
stituent in the thing that is ruled by it. Law is the 
most fundamental thought that belongs to any being or 
thing. You cannot tell why it is, but the root of all 
law is force ; or, if you choose a better term, of energy ; 
or, if still another, you may call it life. It is that 
indivisible, indestructible something that moves onward 
and moves by given modes. Its given modes you call 



80 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

laws, and by the word law you can express no more. 
The modes of matter are simply modes of force, — law's 
methods, according to which the force shall act. And 
what is true of matter, what is true of the plant which 
blossoms in your garden-bed, is true of the intelligent 
being that bends over the plant and admires the blossom. 
As the plant blossoms by its own inherent and constitu- 
tive principle, so the rational intelligence that cultivates 
it exists and moves according to its own constitutive, 
indestructible principle. We accept the declaration of 
science then when it tells us that law is not arbitrarily 
imposed of God. 

Law is declarative of man's nature as well as of God's 
nature. It is declarative of man's nature because man 
was first himself declaratory of God's nature, — the old 
truth, not Biblical alone, belonging to all men and all 
philosophies, that man is the image of God. God is, 
and ever must be, the prototype of man. We are copies 
of Him. We accept, then, this modern teaching, if you 
may call it such, as not contradictory to God's word, 
but as confirmatory; we take those old, indestructible 
truths, brought up, if you insist upon it, out of Egypt, 
codified and speaking to you as they spoke to those who 
gathered round Moses for guidance, speaking to us all, 
real and eternal truth ; we admit that these laws spoken 
by Him who spake as never man spake, illustrated in all 
these successive centuries, have been corroborated by 
modern science, and stand out to-day warranting an 
emphasis of the words of Paul to the Jew such as they 
never had before : " Who hast the form " (hast the ex- 
pression, the representation, the real declaration) " of 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 81 

knowledge and of truth in the law. " But when modern 
scientists tell us of their teaching, pray have they dis- 
proved the authority or the truth of the old law which 
says, first of all, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy might, mind, and strength " ? Is not the instinctive 
impulse to reverence as profound, as deep-seated, as 
indestructible in the nature of man as of old? Has 
science supplanted it ? Take the other truth : " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. " Has science im- 
proved upon it? Has it done more than confirm it? 
Take the whole round, — remembrance of the Sabbath, and 
all through the series. Is it less true to-day than of 
old, " Thou shalt not commit adultery " ? Pray, has 
modern science disproved one of the moral teachings of 
Moses and of Christ? Have the sciences not corrobo- 
rated, reiterated, reinforced, driven to the innermost soul 
of man, the conviction that the law is the form of eternal 
truth ? Assuming this, what does moral law teach us ? 
What are the lessons of moral law ? 

According to the teaching of science, law is represen- 
tative of the nature of man. That is a thought I wish 
further to dwell upon. Granting that law is simply 
declarative of the nature of man, what does it teach us ? 
First of all, it teaches us the ground of the divine authority 
over us. We meet the atheist here. We meet the 
modern scientist at the very threshold. We claim that 
according to his own teaching, moral law is constitutive 
of the moral nature of man. It teaches us what is the 
ground of the divine authority over us, but I might go 
back of that, and say that it first of all reveals God. It 
is not an empty earth that declares the divine Being ? 



82 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

You might wend your way over the trackless waste of a 
desolated earth, decked by no green thing, visited by no 
moving life, and you would see no evidence of God there. 
You would be like the blindfolded man, led amid the 
sounds of clanking machinery, who would hear the sighs 
and groans of some chained force, but would see no 
design. Unbandage his eyes and let him see the har- 
monious whole, working out some beautiful results, and 
there would be the thought that it had a maker. So in 
our world, clothed as it is with verdure, the physical 
subordinate to the vegetable, the vegetable subordinate 
to the animal, the animal subordinate to the intellectual, 
the intellectual subordinate to the moral, the whole as- 
cending series, crowned not only by intelligence but by 
conscience, bespeak a personal Being, and no human 
intelligence can escape the thought; it is an irresistible 
conclusion, that where intelligence perceives a design, it 
must see a designer; wherever it takes up a result, it 
must see the author behind it. God speaks in it. 

But then the ground of His authority, behind that, is 
because life, intelligence, is personal. You and I can 
look upon the forces of nature, confront them anywhere, 
and stand unmoved ; men do it every day. The old 
prophet of Horeb fled to the cave on the mount, and sat 
down to his musings and repinings. The voice of God 
said to him, " Go forth. " He went forth. The tornado 
swept by in its fury, levelling everything in its pathway ; 
the earth upon which he stood trembled ; the mountains 
toppled; all nature reeled around him, and he surveyed 
the scene and saw no God there. The thunder bolts 
dropped from heaven, smiting and melting whatever 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 83 

stood in their pathway. He saw no God there. But 
when " the still small voice " spoke, he heard God. 
There was no voice in the wind, no voice in the earth- 
quake, no voice in the fire ; but a still small voice spoke 
in the ear of his soul, and he wrapped his face in his 
mantle, and bowed his head. So is it of man everywhere. 
To be rational is to be conscious of some rational Being 
around us and behind us. You may go sounding your 
way out into the eternity to come ; you may, by retrogres- 
sion, traverse the eternity of the past, — you can find no 
stopping place where, as rational intelligences, you do 
not find yourself addressed by a rational Intelligence. 
It is because God is a Personal Being, that He has 
authority over us, my friends. We can stand before the 
impersonal authority of the state. Many a man has 
stood unblenched, facing all its associated, its combined 
terrors; but let a man nobler than you stand reprovingly 
as he looks into the depths of your soul, and you quail 
before him. You quail before him. It is not in your 
power to stand up and face the man. It may be a prophet 
looking into you and saying, " Thou art the man ; " it 
may be the servant that trembles at your word. But 
wherever there is a man higher, or nobler, or purer than 
you, he is your master. It matters not what may be your 
kingly power, what may be behind your will, what may 
be your mere accidental trappings of wealth or elevation 
of position ; all amount to nothing when a pure intelli- 
gence looks into the eyes of another intelligence and 
reproves it, and carries with the reproof the overwhelm- 
ing conviction of right and of justice. So it is, then, in 
the presence of God. It is not because He is Almighty, 



84 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

my friends ; it is because you stand alone with God, self- 
condemned. It needs not a voice to declare from the 
throne of God that you are guilty. Your own self- 
accusings overwhelm you in His divine presence, and 
that which gives to the authority of God its irresistible- 
ness is that He is infinitely the best Being that looks 
upon this universe. The ground of His authority, then, 
is in the perfectibility of His own nature ; the authority 
of God is original. We are made in His image. It is 
this principle of which I have been speaking, friends, 
that accounts for the apotheosis of the hero. How old 
Woden has sent his name down through the ages! 
How Thor, with his hammer, has been immortalized ! 
All the calendars of saints, the apotheosis of men in 
polytheism, — hero-worship everywhere declares this 
truth. Man in his puny endeavors is ever seeking to 
put up something before him that he can feel worthy 
of his worship. It may be the Chinese bowing down 
before his ancestor; it may be the Eomanist worship- 
ping his calendar of saints ; it may be the Christian 
philosopher rising up to the sublime conception of an 
Infinite Being, — but everywhere man has indestructible 
in him the instinct of worship. And this law declaring 
his own nature finds that there is an authority of God 
lying behind all power. It is in His personal nature. 

There is a second lesson to be learned, — namely, the 
inviolability of moral obligation ; or, to put it in other 
phrase, the inexorability of moral laws. If moral laws 
were simply the declaration of an infinitely wise being, 
then they might be as some shallow thinkers tell us they 
are. Law might be a flexible quantity that could be 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 85 

enforced or abrogated, according to the wise dictates of 
a ruler; a scarecrow that should stand up amidst the 
waste of human society to warn men, and which might 
be transfigured, transformed into an avenging angel, or 
might be torn away, or banished, after accomplishing 
good to society. Is moral law such a thing ? Has it 
simply been devised for the end of society, or shall we 
believe, rather, as does the modern scientist, that law is 
as indestructible as personal identity ? It is that which 
constitutes identity. It is that which makes man the 
man, and distinguishes him from the brute ; that which 
constitutes all that is distinctively peculiar to man is 
the moral law upon which he is organized. If this be 
so, then you will at once see that it is not within the 
power of fiat, it is not within the possibility of power, 
even omniscient power, to abrogate law, to arbitrarily 
wipe away the penal consequences of violated law. 
Law can no more be arrested by fiat, no more abrogated 
by decree, no more taken away by any external contriv- 
ance, than you can take away the identity of the personal 
being which is constituted by it. And if such be the 
moral law, then you will readily see the significancy of 
the primitive power of conscience. That which makes 
the terrific power of conscience is that it is the individ- 
ual judging himself. It is man simply confronting him- 
self and judging himself. Were it another external 
being, we might appease him. But can man appease 
himself ? Can he change himself ? That which makes 
the terror of it is, that he is both judge and culprit. He 
is himself the source of the law, and the source of the 
judgment pronounced according to law. So that when 



86 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Milton tells the story of Satan's terrific exclamation, 
there is truth in it : — 

" Me miserable ! Which way shall I fly 
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair ? 
Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ; 
And, io the lowest deep, a lower deep, 
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, 
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." 

This is profound truth, friends. That which constitutes 
the terribleness of moral law, that which gives the 
implacability to conscience, is that man is the being 
judging himself, and judging himself according to the 
immutable laws of his own nature. And when we so 
look at it, we understand again the words of Job : — 

" In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep 
falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made 
all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; 
the hair of my flesh stood up, Tt stood still, but I could not 
discern the form thereof. An image was before mine eyes, 
there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying, Shall mortal man 
be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his 
Maker?" 

If I condemn myself, as we have said, shall I be 
more just than God ? If I flee in terror, shall I not, as 
I look up into the presence of the Eternal Gocl, see the 
same calm, unbroken stillness saying, it is just? Law 
is inexorable, and, my friends, you never can escape the 
penal consequences of wrongdoing any more than you 
can escape yourself. 

Take the wings of the morning ; fly to the uttermost 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 87 

parts of the earth ; descend to the depths of hell ; climb 
the battlements of heaven ; go where you will ; so long as 
you are with yourself, you will find that moral law can- 
not be trifled with ; that it is inexorable, immutable, 
infallible as your own personality is indestructible. 

Again, there is another lesson to be learned from 
this, — the ground of personal rights and their sacred- 
ness. Very general attention has been concentrated in 
our day on the ground of human rights. These rights have 
a two-fold aspect, — rights in their relation to God, and 
rights in their relation to our fellowmen. These two 
cover the whole ground of human rights. It has been 
asserted by a class of writers, and by one, indeed, a 
Scotch writer of our own day, a man who has not yet 
reached middle age, with some degree of force, that man 
has no rights in relation to God. He scorns with lofty 
indignation the theory of Pessimism. He is roused up 
into a sort of moral, lofty objuration against the idea 
that God could predestinate man " to damnation. " And 
yet he tells us that " man has no rights in relation to 
God. " And the sole ground of his assumption is that 
personal existence is the gift of God, and that the mode 
of the existence is determined by the will of God, and 
that if God does thus originate life, He has the right to 
control and direct it. The reasoning is false. We may 
say it reverently, say it here in the divine presence, 
but say it calmly and distinctly : If God makes me a 
rational being, He has endowed me with inalienable 
rights in my relation to Him, under His government; 
rights which He can no more invade than He can over- 
throw His throne, and rights which we may say, and say 



88 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

devoutly, God Himself bows before with infinite re- 
spect. My friend, God may not invade one of the rights 
of your personal being, to save you — not to save you 
from eternal death. He works not arbitrarily. He 
works in accordance with law; and He, having made 
you a personal being, capable of choice, has put within 
your power the determination of what you will be in 
the future. It is not imposed upon you. But, by virtue 
of having constituted you a free, voluntary being, He 
has endowed you with the right to exercise your volition. 
You do exercise it. God will not interpose or interrupt 
its exercise. This, we think, is an answer to the decla- 
ration that " we have no rights in relation to God. " 

But there are rights in relation to man ; and how have 
men prated endlessly in their defence. Eivers of blood, 
through century after century, have flowed simply in 
their defence. Nations risen to "glory, possessed of 
wealth, intelligence, have dashed themselves one against 
the other, scattering the earth with fragments of their 
ruin, all in defence of imaginary rights. Forever are 
our ears dinned with the declaration of "our rights." 
Our own national existence began in a defence of them. 
Great Britain declared that it had a right to tax its 
American colonies, " to shear its American wolf " (as 
the opponent of the system called it), and the American 
colonies declared that they had a right to shear them- 
selves, and in maintenance of that right they were ready 
to lay down life. What constitutes " the sacredness of 
our rights " ? Why is it that nations and whole genera- 
tions have been ready to surrender their existence rather 
than forfeit their rights ? Why ? What are the foun- 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 89 

dations of my rights ? Simply, " That I am a personal 
being?" No, my friend, but the profoundest ground of 
my rights lies in my obligations. I have no rights if I 
have no obligations. I cannot plead a right to life, a 
right to liberty, a right to the pursuit of happiness, a 
right to property, except upon that ground. All these 
depend upon my duty. 

First of all are laws that bind me to God. This is the 
question which has arisen in every age, " Judge ye 
whether it be right to serve God or man," — i. e., 
whether it be right to follow my moral convictions, 
obey the laws of my moral being, though thus I allow 
myself to be plundered, robbed, enslaved. I have no 
rights except just so far as they are requisite to the ful- 
filment of my obligations. What is the ground of my 
right to take another man's life, rather than have my own 
sacrificed ? Simply the obligations laid upon me. I am 
a citizen, I am a father. There are those looking to me, 
there may be those dependent upon me. I have no right 
to allow myself to be lawlessly sacrificed, because I have 
obligations. Behind my rights everywhere will be found 
stern, implacable, inevitable, inexorable laws. And it 
is because there are moral laws that bind me to God that 
I am not at liberty to allow any man to interfere with 
the fulfilment of those laws. It is because I have laws 
binding me to my fellow-creatures that I have no right 
to allow the assassin or robber to plunder me; by plun- 
dering me he disables me for the performance of my 
moral obligations. If I have no obligations, if I vacate 
laws, my rights are gone with them. 

Every man recognizes this when he talks of human 



90 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

slavery. Every man recognizes this when he goes thor- 
oughly into an analysis of what constitutes " right. " So 
that in our day, when men tell us that moral rights 
spring simply from " personal being, " we deny it ; and 
we say to every man : " First of all, fulfil your obliga- 
tions, and then prate about your rights. " Underneath 
all rights are the duties which you owe to God, to your- 
self, and to society. Fulfil these, and in fulfilling them 
you will maintain " your rights ; " for in all cases rights 
accompany the fulfilment of moral obligations. 

There is another lesson learned from this. It sets 
before us the highest aim of man in life. Let us recapit- 
ulate. We have said : The theory that moral law reveals 
the moral nature of man, first teaches us the ground of the 
divine authority over us; then, secondly, the inevita- 
bility of our moral obligations, or the inexorableness of 
the laws of our moral being; and, thirdly, the ground 
of our moral rights and their sacredness. Our next 
thought is : The true destination of man, or the highest 
aim which a man can set before him. What is it? 
Why, manifestly a complete fulfilment of all the laws of 
his moral nature. There is no higher aim, because, in 
fulfilling this aim, the fulfilment of every other necessa- 
rily follows. I am not unaware that it may be asserted 
that this is a selfish view of man ; that he who fixes his 
eye solely upon himself, asking if he is fulfilling the laws 
of his being, isolates himself from society. This is a 
mistake, friends. As you and I came down the side- 
walk to-day, we stepped carefully. Masses of stone had 
been thrown up from the level. Why ? The little root- 
lets, so feeble apparently, in obedience to the energy 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 91 

that was in them, seeking to fulfil their mission, search- 
ing for nutriment to send up to the giant tree above, 
put forth a force which lifted the mighty pressure that 
had been put upon them, threw it up from the level, 
asserted its inherent strength. Chain the force wherever 
you will, it affirms its * right. " So there are laws, — 
laws of your nature. First of all is that instinctive 
necessity of looking out for and finding somewhere a 
support. The young vine that shoots up to-day, soon 
to be loaded with clusters, stretches out its tendrils for 
support somewhere, — support against the rude blast 
that will soon come. What are you and I, with all 
our glory and all our power, but feeble tendrils, seek- 
ing, groping, somewhere, for something to lay hold 
of that will keep us steady in the commotions and 
turmoils of life ? Where is it ? Shall I trust in man 
whose breath is in his nostrils ? Shall I trust in man ? 
He will deceive me. In the very hour in which I 
shall depend on him he will be gone. No ; there is that 
within you, my friend, there is that in every one of us, 
reason about it as you will, which forces you to look 
outward and inward for something to cling to, which 
forces you to say, " Oh! where is that which I can lay 
hold of and feel secure ? " God is that only support. 
So I say, that to fulfil this law of your being is not 
" selfishness. " 

You belong to society also. You cannot escape soci- 
ety. If you flee from man, you still sigh for man. It 
is only a desperate remedy for a diseased intellect that 
leads men to seek solitude. The normal condition of 
man is association, society, friendship, love. You crave 



92 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

it; you are solitary and helpless without it. To fulfil 
the law of your being is, then, to fulfil your obligations 
to your fellowmen ; you cannot love yourself properly and 
not love your fellowmen ; you cannot love your fellow- 
men and not love yourself ; so that this love is not " sel- 
fish. " The grandest philanthropists that tread the earth 
are men that feel stirring within them the impulses of 
the indestructible laws of their being, which bind them 
to God and bind them to their fellowmen, and they realize 
their own highest ideal just in proportion as they realize 
their relation to God and to their fellowmen. 

What were this earth without that energizing power 
that comes from the blazing glory above us, that dazzles 
us as we gaze at it ? Blot it out and you blot out all 
life from the earth. Blot out God from human thought, 
blot out the idea of God from human society, and you 
bring only desolation and emptiness. Take man from 
his relation to his fellowmen, and you have made society 
a blank, you have turned the race to destruction, you 
have unpeopled the earth. 

So all the obligations that belong to us will be fulfilled 
just in proportion as man asks earnestly and patiently, 
" How shall I fulfil these laws of my being ? " He loves 
God best who loves all men best. He loves all men best 
who is most profoundly, self-respectfully intent upon 
fulfilling the laws of his nature. So that he who realizes 
this ideal of himself most perfectly is one who is the son 
of God and the son of man. 

You may ask me, " Is this all ? " I have presented 
before you a picture which is severe, — laws, grinding 
laws, laws everywhere. The moral order of the universe 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 93 

must be maintained at every hazard; physical order is 
subordinate to moral order ; it must prevail. Is that all \ 
Then certainly life were a saddening spectacle. Genera- 
tions hastening across the face of the earth, burying their 
dead, wiping their eyes, hastily turning away and ask- 
ing, " Oh ! is there nothing but this ? " 

God rent the veil. The Son of Man came. The Son 
of Man, who incorporated all these laws, so that when He 
spoke moral law, He spoke it intuitively. He did not 
arrive at it by induction; He did not arrive at it by 
deduction. He spoke it because He incorporated it; He 
lived it; He was the moral law, speaking out to the 
race. And He not only fulfilled it, but He made it pos- 
sible for you and me to fulfil it. 

Christ uttered no weightier truth in all His teachings 
than this : " Think not that I am come to destroy the 
law or the prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to 
fulfil. " Christianity for its first, its last aim, sets before 
you and me " the fulfilment of the law. " Be assured, 
my friends, Christianity is not a contrivance to evade 
law. It is not a scheme that is intent only upon arrest- 
ing the penalty of law. It does " arrest penalty, " but it 
arrests it for the one sole reason that Christ may be 
formed in us, and we may through Him be conformed to 
law, — conformed to law, not released from it. It is 
rewritten in us. It is made to shine forth in Him as it 
never shone forth before. And the Christian man, in- 
stead of finding morality separated from religion, instead 
of finding religion to be a scheme or device, " how not to 
do it, " finds that its one single aim is " how to do it. " 
And there is nothing that is so intently called for in our 



94 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

time as the preaching of the Gospel as the scheme of God 
to fulfil law, fulfil it in the counting-room, fulfil it in 
fiduciary trusts and positions, fulfil it everywhere. And 
Christ stands up bearing the penalty and saying, " Who- 
soever will, let him come unto me ; " for the express 
purpose of bearing that penalty for you, and re-writing 
that law in your heart, He is at once the Son of God 
and the Son of Man. 

Therefore, when the scientist turns to us and says, 
" We accept the philosophy of your religion, but not the 
facts ; we accept the spirit of your Christianity, but not 
Biblical teachings. " We reply, " Friend, they stand or 
fall together. " We accept the declaration of science, 
then, when it comes to us, with its theory of life, show- 
ing that every moral teaching of the Bible is as immut- 
able as God's throne. But, further, we declare to you 
that Christ stands immovable. You can no more dis- 
place Him from history than you can displace moral 
law. You can no more blot out of literature the moral 
teachings of Christ than you can blot out from the 
heavens the sun. Christ exists for all time. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : The truths to 
which your attention has been invited rest upon a foun- 
dation with which you are not unfamiliar. These truths 
are the application of principles to which for a few 
months past you have been directing your special atten- 
tion. I shall rejoice if there has been wrought into your 
mental constitution the ineradicable conviction that the 
first aim of life is the fulfilment of duty. The question, 
c What is duty ? " is not the watchword of our times. 



NATURE AND CLAIMS OF MORAL LAW. 95 

In this day, the watchword is, " What will pay ? " As 
you look out into the future, gilded visions allure you. 
Pathways stretching o'er hill and dale invite your 
steps. You will meet tempters by the way. There is 
but one safeguard. Carry with you always, as a control- 
ling, an ever-present thought, " What does God require ? 
What is the requirement of that moral nature which I 
am to carry with me through life and into eternity ? * 
Wealth, as you may acquire it, may take wings to itself 
and vanish. Eeputation is but a breath. The applause 
of men will not soothe the gnawings of a guilty con- 
science in your closing hour. Let me assure you that no 
truth stands more absolutely demonstrated in history 
than the truth that as you sow you must reap. Sow 
truth! Never violate your consciences under any pre- 
tence. And as you look out into life, remember that 
there is One who will follow you, ■ — One to whom your 
moral nature will respond ; and there is no place in the 
universe of God in which you can hide from His search- 
ing; and there is no place in the universe of God in 
which He will not beam gladness into your soul, if, 
with honesty and humbleness of spirit, you hold fast to 
righteousness and truth. The end will come. It may 
come very soon to some of you. No man knoweth to 
which one of your number the " star " upon the printed 
catalogue shall first be affixed. God knoweth. Some 
few of you will travel out over that long, out-stretching 
pathway to which I have alluded. Not he who lives 
longest has the most to be thankful for. He who lives 
most faithfully is the one that has the most honest ground 
of rejoicing before man and before God, — before that 



96 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Lord and Saviour of whom I have spoken, to whose 
teaching let me commend you, whose religion I warn you 
now, in this presence of the Most High, not to forget and 
not to deride, not to speak disrespectfully of, not to 
neglect. For, when you come to the hour of death, 
what can console you but the presence of that merci- 
ful Being who created you, and provided for your happi- 
ness in this life and through eternity ? I have spoken 
of the Lord, who is the Teacher and Saviour of men. 
He passed away from earth long before the period at 
which men ordinarily are called to withdraw. And you 
remember His w^ords, while the impenetrable cloud of 
darkness was resting upon His spirit ; He lifted up His 
eyes to God — it was a moment of rejoicing such as the 
record of His life nowhere else furnishes, when He said : 
" I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do. " By 
God's help, finish your work manfully, in the spirit of 
Christ, and Christ Himself will receive you, that where 
He is, you may be also. 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 

that my ivays were directed to keep Thy statutes ! 

Psalms cxix. 5. 

INNUMERABLE as are the objects of human pursuit, 
the motives which prompt us to pursue them are 
relatively few, and all centre in personal beings. Motives, 
and especially moral motives, never terminate in mere 
things. The artist paints his picture or chisels his 
statue for the gratification of his own taste, or of the 
taste of some other personal beings. And if our motives 
ever appear to terminate in things, it will be found that 
they are such things only, as are in some way brought 
within the great kinship of life. We may pity the 
brute; seek to rescue it from its sufferings, to save it 
from famishing, — but because it possesses life. We may 
look tenderly, even compassionately, upon the drooping 
plant, and seek to restore it ; but it is because the plant 
comes within the kinship of life. Motives springing 
from personal wants are various, and if left to their own 
spontaneity are liable to mislead. The whole family of 
personal beings are bound together by great moral laws, 
— laws from which none of them can escape with im- 
punity. It is the design of moral laws to regulate human 
motives. Unregulated motives lead to irregular conduct, 
to distorted characters ; distorted characters to the dis- 

7 



98 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

ruption of society ; disruption of society to moral anar- 
chy ; and moral anarchy to extinction of human hopes 
and the despair of mankind. Every intelligence open 
to the discernment of moral laws will be prompted at 
times to exclaim in the language of the Psalmist, in 
the text, " that my ways were directed to keep Thy 
statutes ! " 

The sense of duty in human action is a theme of vast 
proportion. It is one that presents itself to us in our day, 
under increasing light, and speaks to us with unwonted 
emphasis. Let us inquire why we all, especially those 
of us who are starting out upon the great career of life, 
should seek to comply with this sense of duty. 

The sense of duty should rule us because, first of 
all, it is unappeasable except by obedience to it. It 
springs into the human breast from the discernment 
of our relation to the right. To see the right clearly 
is to be immediately conscious of the sense of obliga- 
tion. The sense of duty, therefore, is as ineradicable as 
is moral law. The great laws of this universe are not 
imposed upon matter, — not, as popularly represented, 
impressed on it. Physical laws are not great chains to 
hold inanimate matter in organized form. They are in 
the very atoms of which matter is composed. Physical 
laws are in the very constitution of the material universe. 
Where matter is, there are laws. And equally true is it 
that where human beings are, there are moral laws, — 
moral laws, not impressed on them, not prescribed, but 
in the very constitution of the personal being, as much 
so as are the great physical laws that hold the boundless 
complexities of systems in our universe in harmony and 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 99 

order. So moral law, by the very constitution of per- 
sonal beings, holds them with a relentless grasp, and 
duty cannot be escaped. We may fly from it to-day; 
to-morrow it confronts us. We may take the wings ol 
thought and flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, and 
seat ourselves, as we think, in security ; but suddenly and 
imperceptibly it comes face to face with us and exclaims, 
" Lo, I am here. " " Canst thou bind the sweet influences 
of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion ? " Canst thou 
by analysis resolve the constitution of man and dissipate 
moral law ? If thou canst, then thou canst prescribe some 
way by which poor mortals can flee from duty and seat 
themselves apart from it. It is inevitable, and its voice 
cannot be hushed except by patient and faithful compli- 
ance with its demands. 

But duty is not alone the voice of law. Duty is the 
" stern daughter of the voice of God. " There are those 
who tell us that duty is a fiction of the mind ; it is the 
calculation of prudence ; it is a spectre which the human 
mind in its thinking finds cast before it. As the trav- 
eller, standing upon the Brocken heights in the Hartz 
Mountains, finds his own stature drawn out in gigantic 
outlines ; sees the spectre image before him, so they tell 
us, the thought of God is but the image of man projected 
into the blank spaces that are before him. That which 
we call the voice of God, they tell us, is only the echo 
of man in his helplessness and wailing thrown back in 
derision upon him from the emptiness of space above 
him, — 

" Heaven's roof to them 
Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, 
No more, to light them to their purposes." 



100 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Is there ever a spectre without a spirit? Is there 
ever a shadow without a substance and a light to fall 
upon it ? Are these thoughts written all over this earth, 
packed into the very rocks, piled up into the very 
heavens, and is there no thinker? Are we the only 
deities ? If there be minds to read thoughts and to trace 
footsteps, then there has been a thinker to write the 
thoughts; there has been a step, — the step of Deity to 
mark the plains of earth. The voice we hear says to us 
not " this is better, " " this is wiser, " " this is prudent, " 
and " that is unwise, imprudent;" but it says with all 
the imperativeness of almightiness and infinite wisdom, 
" Thou shalt. " When I hear within me the voice, " I 
ought, " I also hear, " I must. " Duty is the voice of 
God. But we may be told men have mistaken the voice. 
There have been great and good men who thought they 
were obeying the voice of duty, and they were deceived. 
It was the voice of the arch deceiver. Did not Paul in 
the sincerity of his heart persecute the Church of God, and 
think most devoutly that he was fulfilling the highest 
obligation ? Did not, they ask us, Calvin give his 
sanction to the burning of Servetus ? Did not John 
Knox, in the ardor of his heart, counsel the execution of 
Mary, Queen of Scots ? Did he not counsel the slaugh- 
ter of her counsellors and supporters ? Have not great 
and good men continually been mistaken ? Yes, doubt- 
less ; but never did a good man and earnest man, seek 
honestly to know his duty, but, in due process of time, he 
found it; and though he may have mistaken it, he mis- 
took it only amid the boundless confusion and power of 
human error that surrounded him. 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 101 

We should also obey the dictates of duty because of its 
relation to our personal happiness, — the lowest of 
motives, it may be ; but as much as for life, we yearn 
for happiness. God makes the love of life and the love 
of happiness to be the test and measure of our duty to 
our fellow-beings. To love our fellowmen as we love 
ourselves, to seek their happiness as we seek our own, 
are human duties ; to seek happiness, therefore, is not 
only an instinct, but a duty of the human spirit. How 
shall we find it ? The happiest men are not those who 
follow the fickle guidance of appetite or fashion. The 
most wretched of beings, that sit down to moan, to write 
bitter things against themselves, are those who find 
standing all around them the frowning duties of life neg- 
lected, or spurned. There is no blight, no mildew, that 
can fall upon the human spirit, so certain to blacken it, 
no shadow so certain to ruin it for this life and the next, 
as that of a neglected duty. What we call human penal- 
ties and human rewards, when we come to analyze them, 
are nothing more nor less than the natural action of this 
sense of duty. Complied with, it fills the soul with 
sunlight and joy; what men in their own language call 
heaven. That heaven about which so many unthinking 
men prate — what is it, after all, but the clear, serene 
atmosphere into which one ascends, carrying with him 
the consciousness that he has done his duties faithfully ; 
that he has fought the good fight ? What is that blank, 
dark, dank prison of hell but the accusing voices of 
neglected duties ? What is it, after all, but the gnawing 
sense that " I might have done it, and I failed to do it ; n 
" I ought to have done it, and I left it undone " ? So all 



102 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

the way through life, the man whose countenance is hag- 
gard, whose spirit is unresting, whose soul is burdened, 
whose step is unsteady, is the man who is ever pursued by 
this sense of unfulfilled obligations. And the man who 
looks, though it may be with saddened features, yet with 
serene aspect, into the events of his life, or, the man whose 
step is merrily elastic, is the man who carries the clear 
consciousness within himself that he has done according 
to the measure of his ability, has sought diligently and 
daily to do his duty as God has assigned it to him. 

Further, the faithful performance of duty stands in an 
unalterable relation to character. Character may be looked 
upon in two lights. The human soul may be conceived 
of as a simple essence capable of illimitable expansion, 
susceptible to every variety of impression, and character 
as the result of the impression which the surrounding 
duties of life leave upon the soul. As you all know, the 
word in the original Greek meant simply the stamp, the 
die ; then the impress which the stamp leaves upon the 
yielding substance. So, character is simply the resultant, 
the stamp left by the fulfilled obligations of life. He 
who flees from them, fails of that symmetry of develop- 
ment, that harmonious proportion of parts which would 
come from standing firmly amid the pressing duties of 
life. He who holds himself with unflinching and un- 
wincing purpose, steadily up to the stern duties of life, 
finds that they leave a permanent impress upon him, and 
this impress we call his character. 

You may conceive of character in another light. The 
human spirit may be regarded as a combination of subtile 
forces, — too subtile to be ascertained by analysis ; forces 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 103 

of instinct, of appetite, of imagination, of reason, and 
will ; all co-existing, each liable to show itself indepen- 
dently of the others ; each intended to be so wrought in 
with the others, so to be knit together with all the others, 
so to be braided in and held, as that man shall be com- 
plete, organized, and, with all these forces maintained in 
their proper strength and relations, that he shall be 
possessed of what we call integrity. This is character 
under another aspect, and it is alone obedience to the 
sense of duty that gives it. 

There are men, the threads of whose moral life are fly- 
ing all abroad, who show to you that they are incom- 
plete, disorganized, incapable, destined to confusion, 
overthrow, and ruin. They are not men possessed of 
character; and character, I may here add, is closely akin 
to reputation. Men, in the long run, never fail to judge 
aright their fellows. Every man in this great battle of 
life is sure, sooner or later, to obtain, in the estimate of 
his fellowmen, his just deserts. There is an eternal 
justice in the processes of the eternal God, by which 
every man will, unerringly, receive his own; and the 
reputation, which men so much prize, rests only in the 
end on solidity of character. 

There is another reason why we should give close, 
unremitted attention to duty. It is found in the pre- 
vailing conceptions of popular Christianity. Every age 
has its own types of Christian thought, and consequently 
its own types of character, — types of thought that im- 
press themselves upon society, and produce its types of 
character. The type of Christianity prevailing in our 
own day is worthy of the most devout and careful atten- 



104 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

tion of every man. The tendency everywhere is to make 
Christianity simple, easy of possession, — as if, one might 
almost say, a universal strife exists among the sects to 
see how easy they may make it for men to enter into the 
kingdom of God ; and the people long to have it so, — 
rejoice in being told that Christianity can be taught them 
in six short and easy lessons. It is so much easier to 
burn incense, to do obeisance to empty names, to bow 
before imaginary deities on human altars; so much 
easier to cultivate fervid emotions by the singing of dog- 
gerel rhymes ; so much easier to tithe mint and anise and 
cummin, than to sustain the weightier matters of the law, 
— that the people love to be told that a paroxysm of pain 
succeeded by a paroyxsm of delight is the whole work of 
Christianity done once for all. They delight to be told 
that all is completed when a man is born into the king- 
dom of God, — as if the whole work of Christianity 
merely amounted to the declaration that they are disci- 
ples of Christ. Christianity reconstructs personal char- 
acters, and reconstructs society, and the religion of Jesus 
Christ is a religion of law. Christianity is not a device to 
evade law, to blot out the penalty of law, but, on the con- 
trary, it is the re-publication, the enforcement of law. 

When we look at this popular tendency, need we be 
surprised at the results ? Eeligion doubtless never 
spread itself so widely over society, or struck so deep into 
the heart of society, as it is doing to-day. And yet, 
why this general breakdown in public morals? Why 
these betrayals of trust ? Why these briberies at the bar, 
and in the halls of legislation ? Why this moral cowardice 
in the pulpit? Why the narrow bigotry? Why a con- 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 105 

ception of Christianity which is founded upon some frag- 
ment of doctrine, rather than that comprehensive view 
that takes in the whole horizon of thought, — that charity 
which is serene and transparent and comprehensive as 
the atmosphere that surrounds the globe ? The religion 
of the Lord Jesus Christ is a religion that teaches us that 
first of all is law, last of all is law, — law at the begin- 
ning, law in the progress, law in the consummation. 

And there is another consideration. The design of 
Christianity is simply to bring law, or sense of duty, and 
love, or spontaneity of soul, into oneness. The aim of 
Christianity, I say, is to bring man to that condition 
where he shall love law ; where he shall say, in the lan- 
guage of the Psalmist, " how love I Thy law ! It is 
my meditation day and night. " Observe, if you will, 
how the great Founder of our religion began His career, 
simply by teaching law. How He declared with empha- 
sis the word which I have already read, "Think not that 
I am come to destroy the law and the prophets. I am 
not come to destroy, but to fulfil. " That was His first 
lesson. He illustrated it in all His life. He embodied 
that law in His personality ; He looked it out of His 
eyes. It spoke from His lips. It radiated from every 
feature. And He said to His disciples, " Unless your 
righteousness shall exceed that of the Scribes and the 
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 
God. " From the beginning to the end, He reiterated 
moral law ; and more than that, in His example, when 
occasion came, there was no evasion ; there was no nar- 
rowness ; there was no pleading for excuse or release ; 
and though his soul was crushed with agony such as no 



106 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

man ever may comprehend, he said, " Nevertheless, not 
my will but thine be done. " 

Who are they, then, that tell us that Christianity is 
perverted ? that Christianity is a religion of freedom — 
not a religion of duty ? In the name of my Master, in 
the name of that holy religion which He founded, I pro- 
test that Jesus Christ taught in His example that the first 
thought of the human spirit should be, " What is my 
duty ? " When they tell us that law historically pre- 
ceded Christianity, and therefore has been abrogated, 
they misunderstand it. Law was not historically before 
Christianity. Christianity was older than law. Law 
simply presented to mankind one aspect of the Christian 
religion. Christianity was older than the law. Chris- 
tianity to-day, when it comes with its announcement to 
man, comes with its unalterable command, ye shall do 
the will of God, or perish. That is the religion of 
Christ to-day. 

Nor did Christ only yield to duty, but His servants 
also. Hear those servants when they speak. When 
there came before them a choice between stripes, perse- 
cution, and death, or compliance with the sense of duty, 
Peter said, in no vain boasting, knowing his own weak- 
ness, " Whether it be right to hearken unto you rather 
than to God, judge ye. " He appealed to their con- 
sciences and to ours, that the voice of duty takes prece- 
dence of every other consideration ; that we cannot 
escape from it; that it is the voice of God; that our 
duty and happiness are forever inseparable. It is the 
purpose of God and Christianity that we should always 
yield to duty. Let us, then, when we look into this 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 107 

religion of grace, remember that it is grace only that 
law may be fulfilled. And you will observe that this is 
provided for in the philosophy of the Christian religion. 
It is not a philosophy of forgiveness by fiat. It is not a 
religion which leads men to look up to heaven that for- 
giveness may come by words, but a religion that works 
according to unchanging and unalterable laws within us, 
— laws which tell us that the will of God cannot be 
escaped. 

You take the Holy Sacrament upon your lips, and you 
make the most solemn oath that you will never flinch 
from duty or shrink from obligation ; that you will 
never hesitate to do whatever God enjoins upon you. 
And this is a religion of freedom and gladness because it 
is a religion of law, — law which coincides with your 
own deepest desires and aspirations. 

If such, then, be the right conception, duty is only 
another name for love. The sense of duty is only one 
side of a sense of love that springs up where there is a 
consciousness of forgiveness. 

" Stem Law-Giver, yet Thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace. 
Nor know we anything so fair 

As is the smile upon Thy face. 
Flowers laugh before Thee on their beds, 
And fragrance in Thy footing treads. 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 
And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh and 
strong. 

"To humbler functions, awful Power, 
Thee we call. We ourselves commend 
Unto Thy guidance from this hour. 
O may our weakness have an end. 



108 "BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Give unto us, made lowly wise, 

The spirit of self-sacrifice. 

The confidence of wisdom give, 

And through the light of truth Thy bondmen let us live." 

Young Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : Your 
college life is now ending. Its opportunities, neglected 
or improved, are all gone to return no more forever. 
Its honors have all been won or lost. The record of your 
college life is written on your characters, intellectual 
and moral, in lines never to be effaced. There are 
epochs in the life of every individual as there are also in 
nations, — periods of transition ; points from which there 
is an opportunity for retrospection and anticipation. You 
look back with something of gratification upon the four 
years that you have been associated together. They have 
been years of more than ordinary class prosperity. No 
root of bitterness has sprung up to disturb your fellow- 
ship. You have dwelt in harmony, and you have had 
more than the usual prosperity of college classes. Your 
honors have not been easily won. You have done well. 
You have profound reason for gratitude to God, — grati- 
tude for the preservation of your numbers. One only 
has fallen by the way, — one the manliest among the 
manly. His aspirations were all high and pure. Un- 
corrupted in principle and animated by honest ambition 
to prepare himself for unusually responsible trusts that 
awaited him, your classmate, Sayles, finished his course 
in your second year. Disease smote him ; Death claimed 
him for his own. Unrepiningly, patiently, trustingly 
he laid himself down to die, and God took him. May 
your careers be as noble and unspotted as his. There is 



THE SENSE OF DUTY. 109 

a future before you. No one of you knows to what the 
paths on which you are about to enter will lead you. 
There is something mysterious, something grand, some- 
thing inspiring, something almost awful, if I may so call 
it, in the career of a young man who bids adieu to college 
life and starts out into the great race of society. Hid- 
den dangers, unexpected temptations, trials and burdens 
will come to you. You know not, any one of you, how 
high you may go, how great the trusts that will be com- 
mitted to you. How many and anxious the hopes that 
will centre in you, God knows. Let me tell you, young 
gentlemen, there is but one Being that can know. To 
Him you can go with confidence. You cannot tell the 
secrets of your hearts even to your nearest fellow ; even 
if you would he cannot know them. There is an eye 
that reads the subtilest thought, and knows it before it 
is your own ; and He alone can keep you and strengthen 
you and nerve you to manliness, and make you quit your- 
selves like men. 

Let me commend to you that upon which we have tried 
to dwell, — the sense of duty. 

" Its slightest touches, instant pause ; 
Debar a' side pretences 
And resolutely keep its laws, 
Uncaring consequences." 

There will be consequences. Men may sneer to hear 
you refuse to do evil. There are men that may laugh 
and deride when you dare to stand up in the face of 
society and say : " I dare not do evil ; " when you say in 
the weakness of your own spirit, but in the strength of 



110 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

the divine Helper : " I dare to do right. " There may 
be great consequences in this. The consequences are 
that the very men who scorned you will be the first to 
trust you. Never forget that any success in life, won 
by disloyalty to truth and disregard to duty, will be a 
fatal defeat; that any gain, wrought by a sacrifice of 
duty, will be a fatal loss. And, young gentlemen, look- 
ing upon you with something of a father's heart, may 
God keep you. Let me, above all things, remind you 
that our holy religion, at which so many venture in 
our day publicly to scoff, is the sole hope of man? and 
that He who taught men how to live and how to die, and 
how to triumph, will keep you if you trust Him, and 
help you to triumph as He did. May you know what it 
is to be humble, faithful servants of God and disciples 
of Jesus Christ. Amen. 



SCIENCE AND THE CHEISTIAN EELIGION. 

What is the Almighty that we should serve Him ? and 
ivhat profit should we have if ive pray unto Him ? 

Job xxi. 15. 

PHESE words sound as if they might have been 
-*• written yesterday, rather than three thousand years 
ago. They embody questions with which our ears are 
every day becoming increasingly familiar. They are 
questions which are asked with an eagerness of tone that 
startles Christendom. The conception of a personal 
God is now openly assailed on the two grounds, — first, 
that if there be a God, it is impossible to assure our- 
selves that we know what kind of a being He is ; and, 
secondly, assuming that He is what the Bible represents 
Him to be, the personal character which the popular 
Biblical religion is producing is in no way superior, but 
in fact is inferior to that which the Gospel of natural 
science is now giving to the world. 

Whether we can know what God is, or not, it is plain 
enough that we may know what His worshippers are; 
and if we know what His worshippers are, it is not diffi- 
cult to determine what their notions of Him must be, and 
we may safely leave it to the common sense of mankind 
to decide whether their notions be just and God in Him- 
self really is what He is supposed to be. 



112 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

The aim of all true religion manifestly must be to 
assist man in attaining to the highest end for which he 
exists ; and one end for which he exists, it is equally 
manifest, must be the free, full, and harmonious devel- 
opment of every faculty of his being. No higher end is 
possible without this. So far, therefore, as we fall short 
of this end, and so far as we fail of any one of the suc- 
cessive steps by which this end is reached, life becomes 
a failure. And any form of religion which contents 
itself with mere abstinences, mortifications, and humilia- 
tions, or which prompts only to protestations of faith 
and love, without the fruits of righteous living, is not 
a religion which can either prove itself to be divine or 
can command the respect of honest and reflecting minds. 
True religion will not end in mere negations ; it will 
not merely save a man from his fears and his penalties; 
it will not leave him alone till it has made the most and 
the best of him of which he is capable. The surest test, 
therefore, of the truth of a religion is the kind of charac- 
ter into which it moulds its adherents. 

And it is equally clear that a man's conduct and 
character will be simply what his innermost convictions 
make them. Ascertain what his strongest convictions 
really are, and you may know for a certainty what his 
character must be. Determine what his character really 
is, and you may affirm with assurance what his hidden 
convictions are. A man's strongest convictions and 
deepest desires may antagonize at the first. The struggle 
between them may be protracted and deadly, but the 
convictions, if enlightened and established, will prevail. 
The two in the end will coalesce and be one. The man 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 113 

will become what his convictions make him. " As a 
man thinketh in his heart so is he. " Trace his words 
and his deeds to their origin, and they will be found to 
spring from what, in his deepest heart, he believes to be 
truest and best. And his words and his deeds, as a 
whole, will be identical with what he in himself really 
is. His being and his doing will be but the two sides of 
one indivisible whole, and the informing principle of the 
whole will be the faith that rules him. 

In the existing conflict between science and religion, 
which certain persons are greatly disposed to exaggerate, 
intimations have been broadly given that a comparison 
of the characters of the leading men of science in our 
time with the characters of the most typical representa- 
tives of the Christian religion, would be to the honor of 
science rather than of Christianity. 

Let it be our present task to recognize briefly and fairly 
the good offices which science is capable of rendering in 
the great work of building up manhood and virtue in the 
earth, but also to point out, with equal fairness, its total 
incapacity to take the place and do the work of the 
religion of Jesus Christ. 

Natural science is doubtless specially favorable to the 
cultivation of some of the primary elements of a noble 
character. And they are elements which are all the more 
necessary because, being primary, they are often over- 
looked. But as there can be no language without an 
alphabet, so there can be no just and symmetrical char- 
acter without its elementary ingredients. Some of even 
the most needed of these, science can contribute. 

Thus the very beginning of all true personal worth lies 

8 



114 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

in a supreme regard for truth as truth, — a willingness to 
sacrifice every thought and purpose of one's being at its 
shrine. This all-conquering love for truth as truth, 
science, it is claimed, imparts as one of its first gifts to 
its votaries. And undoubtedly the very soul of science 
is an insatiable inquisitiveness after fact and reality. 
Science never sits down with conjecture ; it will not 
dwell content under the roof of hypothesis ; it will not 
tarry in its course till it stands face to face with reality. 
Literature lets her votaries dally with fancy ; lets them 
do the unworthy work of sophistry ; lets them follow with 
equal complacency in the trains of truth or of error. But 
science inspires with scorn for whatever is unreal and for 
whatever would detain or divert us from the pursuit and 
ascertainment of reality and truth. No wonder, then, 
that the devotees of science should also be devotees, and 
martyrs even, to what they conceive to be truth ; should 
prove themselves to be pre-eminently possessors of this 
first and most distinctive of all the elements of a high 
and praiseworthy character. 

Akin to a love of truth as truth, is truthfulness toward 
one's self. A reverent love for truth exacts also a rigor- 
ous honesty in dealing with one's self. A thorough- 
going honesty of both purpose and act in the discipline 
of self is an ingredient without which no character can be 
either praiseworthy or complete. To the supply of this 
ingredient, true science is necessarily tributary. No 
man can habituate himself to the study of the invariable 
order of sequences in nature and not feel that, above all 
things else, he must not deceive himself nor allow him- 
self to be deceived. 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 115 

Again, natural science has it in its power to originate 
and nurture in the soul a third great element of all true 
nobility of character, — namely, an inflexibility of pur- 
pose which no bribe of gain nor blandishment of sense 
can seduce into disloyalty to the true and the right. 
To the eye of science, nature reveals herself as uniform 
in all her movements, as inexorable in all her laws, as 
holding together the universe in an unchanging order, as 
moving ever onward in her silent and resistless courses, 
before which the cry of the strongest is as unavailing as 
the wail of a new-born infant. Can any one spend his 
life in watching these forces, in studying the boundless 
and unchanging order which they produce and conserve, 
and himself not be schooled into habitudes of enduring 
purpose and character? 

The pursuits of science, furthermore, are captivating, 
and leave no taste for objects that degrade and demor- 
alize. They are engrossing, and leave no time for pur- 
suits that distract the thoughts and waste the energies. 
The love of science leaves no room in the soul for the 
play of the baser passions; it deafens the ear to the 
clamor of the appetites ; it lifts a man up to a plane of 
life whither the vices of the vulgar herd cannot climb. 
To plant in the heart, therefore, a true love for science, 
is to impart a power which almost insures to its pos- 
sessor some of the manliest of the human virtues. 

The virtues which the lessons of science inculcate, it 
must be admitted, are only virtues of the homelier and 
the sturdier classes. But they are virtues which the 
popular philosophy and the popular religion of our time 
have not been notably successful in cultivating. They 



116 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

are virtues to which sentimentalists in philosophy and 
religion do not attach the highest importance, which 
emotional religion is always disposed to neglect or to 
depreciate. And for these very reasons they are virtues 
which this generation all the more needs to have thrust 
on its attention. We need to be taught that there are 
sterner and more manly virtues than sentimentalism and 
emotional religion is disposed in our time to cultivate. 

But who shall tell us to what extent there is indebted- 
ness, for even these few homely virtues, to the indirect 
and incidental influence of the very religion which it is 
proposed to supplant? What nation is there, within 
which science now exists and flourishes, whose intellec- 
tual firmament is not so studded with the great moral 
truths which Christianity alone has placed there, that 
no man can, if he would, escape their light ? When once 
the atmosphere of the Christian moralities has fallen on 
a people, there is no walk in life to which it does not 
penetrate ; no class or rank who do not breathe it, and 
none of its educated men, who, dealing honestly with 
themselves, and striving manfully after the truth, do not 
inhale it and are not strengthened by it. 

And supposing a belief in the divine authority of 
Christianity could be overthrown ? What then ? Would 
science become independent of the Gospel of Christ ? 

The influence of a religion remains long after a regard 
for it as divine has ceased. The odor of the vase sur- 
vives in its fragments and lingers long in its powdered 
dust. Were the Bible to be thrown aside to-day as a 
book of fables ; were Christianity to be henceforth treated 
as a religion of human device ; were pulpits to be dumb, 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 117 

churches to be closed, and the hope of immortality to 
perish, — centuries would not suffice for the influence of 
the religion of the Bible to die out. The golden threads 
of its thoughts are so wrought into the whole web of our 
modern civilization that demons could not pick them all 
out though they tore that web into shreds, though they 
accomplished the disintegration and downfall of society 
itself. 

In short, a test of what physical science alone can 
accomplish morally for man is, in this generation, and 
in any Christian land, a simple impossibility. Indeed, 
it is more than probable that the test never can be made. 
Thus far it has been in Christian lands alone that physi- 
cal science has existed, not to say flourished ; and there 
are the best of reasons for believing that the ethical truths 
of Christianity — truths which Christianity alone gave 
to the race — shall yet be recognized by all science and 
religion alike as the first truths and the first principles of 
all true morality, truths which underlie this universe, 
truths which will not be dependent on Christianity even 
for their support, but which, once given to the race, are to 
be so universally proclaimed and so inwrought into all 
human thinking that science itself can never escape 
them. 

But not alone to its influence on the personal charac- 
ter of individuals have the good offices of natural science 
been restricted. Its services to ethics and theology, 
those great systems of thought which in centuries past 
have shaped the character and determined the destiny of 
nations, are still more conspicuous. Natural science has 
brought us to look for and to find the eternal truths im- 



118 BACCALAUKEATE SERMONS. 

bedded in those great metaphors by which alone the most 
fundamental truths of religion and morals could be 
announced to men, but to which popular thinking has 
been perpetually disposed to give literal interpretations. 
It was a most ungracious but most needful service which 
Titus wrought in destroying the Temple at Jerusalem, 
and in taking away forever its golden candlesticks. Not 
less useful and not less ungracious is the service which 
physical science is now rendering in pulling down some 
venerable structure, built of metaphors and figures of 
speech, under which good men, it may be, like pious 
Jews in their loved Temple, have long worshipped sin- 
cerely, but which, having served its purpose, we need 
not now lament to see removed. Physical science is 
teaching us that moral laws are not mere decretive pre- 
cepts, the sanctions of which can be enforced or remitted 
at will, but that they are eternal principles of being 
which are as immutable as the nature of God ; that if 
moral law be broken, its penalty cannot be remitted by 
fiat ; that God will not violate His moral law to save any 
one; that He will Himself be just or He will not justify 
the sinner. It has taught men that personal character 
can no more be a matter of literal imputation than per- 
sonal identity can be changed, than wrong can be made 
right by a change of words, or than error can be made 
truth by calling it so. Science is teaching this genera- 
tion that a religion which is true, and which is to com- 
mand the homage of men, must deal with realities and 
not with fictions ; must show its power in the construc- 
tion of enduring character, and not expend itself in mere 
words and obtrusive professions of belief. 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 119 

And all these are offices which science is capable of 
performing, which it has performed and is now perform- 
ing for men ; and for men some of whom assure us with 
a melancholy pride that they can find no trace of a 
Creator, or of a Supreme Being, in any part of the uni- 
verse to which they have yet been able to gain access. 
They tell us that to them the heavens are empty ; that 
the only voices which salute their ears amid the solitudes 
of nature are the inarticulate sounds of colliding and 
mechanical forces; that the only thought which nature's 
ten thousand adaptations of means to ends suggest to 
them is that of the uniformity of law, according to 
which blind and inscrutable force works ever onward and 
onward, aimless and undirected, and yet producing 
a universe of intelligible and perfect order. 

But granting now, as we may, all that can be claimed 
for natural science in its clarification of our moral and 
religious ideas, and especially in its cultivation of the 
virtues, civic, social, or personal — and Heaven forbid that 
a syllable escape us in disparagement of aught it can 
accomplish, or that we should join in an insane clamor 
against all morality and virtue which are not the growth 
of our special teachings — the question still remains 
whether there be a single one of all human virtues which 
the Christian religion does not more effectually cultivate ; 
whether, after all that science can accomplish for man, 
he is not, without Christianity and the personal Christ, 
so radically deficient as to be helpless and hopeless when 
tried in the balances in which science itself would weigh 
him ? Let us look at particulars. 

Natural science instils into the heart of its students 



120 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

a reverent love for truth as truth. And does not the 
first lesson of Christianity teach man to look through 
illusions to realities ? Does it not insist that if a man 
be not willing to sacrifice himself even, if need be, for 
the truth's sake, it is because the love of truth is not in 
him. And more than all, it is not alone the truths of 
things, or of any narrow range of knowledge, but all truth 
in the universe of beings as well as of things, which 
Christianity bids us seek, and bids us love, and bids us 
make ourselves possessors of at any hazard and at any 
sacrifice. Science contents itself with phenomena and 
their laws ; the Christian religion pierces all phenomena 
to ascertain the truths that lie within them. Both glory 
in truth; but the one rests in the truth of inanimate 
matter; the other deals with the truths of both matter 
and spirit. 

But here we shall be told that science accepts nothing 
as truth which has not the test of experience, while 
religion accepts on authority and tradition. The one, 
it is said, talks only of what it knows ; the other, of what 
it believes. The one deals with laws ; the other with 
dogmas ; and ecclesiastical dogmas, we are told by a liv- 
ing historian and critic, are destructive to morality. 
But dogmas are the work of men and not of Christianity 
proper, the decrees of councils and not of God. Galileo 
was compelled to deny what he knew to be true, not by 
the Gospel of Christ, but by ignorant and impertinent 
ecclesiastics. The divine command is, " Prove all things 
and hold fast that which is good. " A professed belief 
in what has not been intelligently accepted is a mockery, 
a delusion, and a snare. A pretended belief in a dogma 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 121 

which does not command the assent of both the under- 
standing and the heart, is fatal alike to all true morality 
and all true virtue. But Christianity demands our 
assent, not to dogmas, but to truth, and leaves no soul at 
rest till assured that truth has been found. 

Again, honesty with one's self, that corner-stone of all 
worthy character, is also specially claimed as one of the 
gifts of science to man. And who shall be faithful to 
himself, and honest in the innermost secrets of his heart, 
if not he who consciously walks under the gaze of an 
omniscient eye and hourly speaks to Him from whom no 
shadow of a thought can be hidden. Under Christian 
tuition it is not law which makes a man honest and 
reverent towards himself, but the Lawgiver, in whose 
image himself was made. It is not the fear of penalty 
which makes him severely just in his treatment of him- 
self, but an abiding sense of that eternal Presence before 
which insincerity flees as darkness before the light. 

And yet again, if natural science ministers to inflexi- 
bility of purpose and to a wholesome hardihood of char- 
acter, it is because these are the hourly lessons taught 
by the inexorability of natural law. But if mere law 
can teach this effectually, how much more shall the 
eternal mind, that through the law proclaims its un- 
changing purpose ? If blind mechanical force, working 
unalterably in its courses, can persuade the human in- 
telligence to steadiness of purpose and to persistency of 
action, how much more if that force proclaims an intelli- 
gent and unchanging will ? And if physical law can do 
all this, how much more can the moral ? The Founder 
of our holy religion taught both by words and in His 



122 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

own person the inexorability of moral law. The heavens 
and the earth, said He, may pass away, but one jot or 
tittle of the law can in no wise fail. The very spirit of 
His religion is the spirit of patient endurance, of a 
courage that never falters, of a stability of hope and. heart 
and character which cannot be moved. Where will you 
look for fixedness of purpose, for stability of character, 
for the highest of human virtues that this world knows, 
if not in him whose hopes are built on the immutable 
promises of an immutable God ? 

But enough of all this. It seems like an offence 
against the intelligence of a Christian audience to be 
defending the influence on the character of a belief in 
the existence of a personal God, as against belief in a 
merely impersonal force of nature; like solemn trifling 
to attempt vindication of the superiority of Christian 
morality and virtue as compared with the virtue and 
morality which the mere laws of matter would incul- 
cate. That such vindication and defence have become 
possible, not to say necessary, before a Christian audi- 
ence, is proof enough, not only of the presumption of 
science, but of the sad deficiencies in the style of charac- 
ter too often produced by the popular religion of our day. 

But turn us for a moment to a closer inspection of the 
moral handiwork of science. Let us look at the boasted 
excellence of character which it is capable of producing. 
Select an ideally perfect specimen. And what have we ? 
The absence of all vices ; a loving loyalty to truth ; an 
honesty as transparent as light ; a devotion to science that 
borders on the spirit of martyrdom. These are great and 
praiseworthy virtues. And could science alone produce 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 123 

them, then were they jewels in her crown. But Chris- 
tianity produces them, produces them of the highest 
type, and, in fact, first taught the world to appreciate 
them at their true value. But they do not constitute 
the whole of human virtue; nor are they the most diffi- 
cult of acquisition. There are the finer virtues, which 
mark the gentleman, which adorn the citizen, which 
grace the husband and father, which make the humble, 
self-distrustful, self-denying servant of God, disciple of 
Christ, and " lover of all good men ; " these are virtues 
which require another light and atmosphere to grow in 
than physical science can furnish. And more than all 
are those subtile and still finer virtues of the heart, the 
gentleness, meekness, sweetness, purity, and peace which 
only the practised eye discerns, which reveal themselves 
only in the closest intimacies of life, and which only the 
supreme worship and love of Him in whom all attri- 
butes unite and are perfected, can produce in the soul. 
These are virtues of which science knows nothing, and 
which, untutored by an intelligence higher than itself, 
it would trample underfoot. These virtues, too refined 
for its rude test of utility, it relegates to sentiment, and 
to sentiment which itself is totally incompetent to create. 
But all these are virtues which are distilled, like the dew 
on the flowers, by the very atmosphere of the religion of 
Christ. 

It may be that the Stoicism of ancient heathenism, 
revived by modern science, may have a temporary resur- 
rection, but it can never permanently take the place of 
the religion of Jesus Christ. Nothing which fails to 
satisfy every yearning of the human heart can command 



124 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 



the abiding homage of the human soul. But the song of 



the Christian is, — 

" Thou, O Christ, art all I want ; 
More than all in Thee I find." 

And every new believer takes up the song with as much 
freshness of feeling as if he had been the first to discover 
its truth. 

But even supposing that the elect few who are admitted 
to the mysteries of science, can find in its teachings, as 
they claim, all that the human soul needs, how about 
the great multitudes of men on whom the light of science 
falls only by a faint and reflected radiance ? The few high 
priests of nature whose pursuits withdraw them from 
the haunts of men, who dwell upon the high table-lands 
of thought apart from the turmoils of society, may be 
seen from afar, conspicuous examples of the manly virtues. 
They may proclaim abroad that they have diligently 
sought for the Christian's God, but cannot find Him ; that 
Jesus Christ is not their Saviour ; that they have saved 
themselves. The vast crowds of men who people the 
lower plains of common life hear the proclamation : " The 
Christian's God has vanished; the Christian religion is 
a fiction ; death is an eternal sleep ; the resurrection a 
cheat, and immortality a lie. " " Filthy dreamers, ' ' self- 
styled scientists, catch up the sounding words, spring to 
the street corners and shout to the passers-by that the 
institutions of religion are an incubus to society ; that 
marriage is a cruel yoke ; that the existing laws of 
morality are not the laws of nature but of priestcraft ; 
that men are not free, but the victims of superstition. 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 125 

Communists hear the cry, and with louder shouts de- 
nounce wealth as robbery, capitalists as pirates, relig- 
ion as a fraud, the churches as in league with tyranny, 
and all modern society as so corrupt that nothing but a 
universal baptism of blood can cleanse it. Have the 
heralds of the new Evangel counted on those followers 
that will flock to their standards ? — can they fail to fore- 
see the results of their teachings ? Can that be truth 
which leads to such issues ? Is it to such issues that we 
in these last days are coming ? 

No ! it is not moral chaos and blank despair to which 
we are hastening. Nature herself will repudiate the 
priests that belie her. The eternal and invisible God 
whom nature conceals while it reveals Him, and who has 
never " left Himself without witness" on the earth, will 
bring to confusion the false prophets, and in His own 
time and way will make Himself to be heard and to be 
revered. It is not science, but ignorance that asks " what 
is the Almighty that we should serve Him, and what 
profit should we have if we pray unto Him ? " Even 
now " Wisdom crieth without ; she uttereth her voice in 
the streets ; she crieth in the chief places of concourse, 
in the openings of the gates; in the city she uttereth her 
words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love 
simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorning, 
and fools hate knowledge ? * And more than all, there 
is a voice in the depths of every human soul, which 
the din of life may drown for awhile, but which, sooner 
or later, will make itself heard, — a voice that " crieth out 
for the living God. " There is in every human heart a 
yearning which passion, or the pride of opinion, may 



126 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

long suppress, but which, when the light of life begins 
to grow dim, and the deepening shadows to fall thick 
and fast, will break out in the articulate cry, — 

" O, somewhere, somewhere, God unknown, 
Exist and be ! 
I am dying ; I am all alone ; 
I must have Thee." 

And that which gives to this cry its great bitterness is 
the conscious presence in the soul of a power which 
hides the very Being who is called upon. It is a power 
which corrupts the affections, which enfeebles the will, 
and which binds in fetters that the soul of itself can 
never break. It is a power to which every human being 
has yielded obedience, and yet a power for obedience to 
which every human being arraigns himself at a tribunal 
from which there can be no appeal. Betrayed, enslaved, 
and self-condemned, it is in vain that the soul appeals 
to natural science for relief. Science mocks the soul in 
its agony by telling it to be patient and strong. To every 
cry for help and remedy, science scornfully replies, 
" There is no help nor remedy which the soul does not 
itself possess; man must save himself or perish." 
Wounded and bleeding, the soul is flung back to its 
anguish and death. But till the power of moral evil in 
the soul be broken, till the heart be cleansed, till the 
sense of sin be washed out by the blood of Christ, till 
the wounds of the spirit be bound up and healed, till man 
be renewed in the spirit and temper of his mind, no 
peace, no symmetry nor rounded beauty of character for 
him are possible. Surely that is a " saying worthy of 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 127 

all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to 
save sinners. " 

Nothing in human history is more distinctive or con- 
spicuous than the evidence of the universal sense of guilt. 
The earth has groaned with altars and temples erected 
for its appeasement. Human blood has been freely 
poured out to wash it away. Schemes of philosophy and 
religion have been devised for its removal. The heavens 
have re-echoed with piercing cries for release from it. 
But all in vain, except as men have listened to the words 
from heaven : " He that calleth on the name of the Lord 
shall be saved. " The only science or philosophy that 
has ever built men up in righteousness and true holiness 
is the science and philosophy of redemption through a 
crucified Saviour. " This is eternal life, to know Thee 
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
sent. " 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: The characters 
you have been forming, both mental and moral, are now 
to pass under the review of other eyes than those which 
have been carefully watching them for the four years 
past. You will be scrutinized, and it will soon be dis- 
covered what manner of persons you are. 

On the characters you have been acquiring will depend, 
more than you can now understand, your future careers. 
Foundations have been laid ; on these you must build. 
No man can build for you ; the structures must be your 
own. And what shall the structure? be ? The question 
is pertinent to the place and the hour. 

Mistakes have doubtless been committed in your 



128 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

college life ; days have been lost which can never be 
recalled ; opportunities neglected which can never be re- 
peated. In all this you have but shared the common lot 
of youthful humanity. Some good habits of both mind 
and heart have also undoubtedly been formed. You will 
be wise men if you let the past teach you a right use of 
the future. Towards that use, listen for a moment to a 
parting word of counsel. 

Bern ember, first of all, that the one aim of life, to 
which all others should be subordinated, is the acquisi- 
tion of such character, mental, moral, and religious, as 
shall stand approved of God and not condemned of your- 
selves. Without this, the greater your other successes 
in life, the swifter, surer, and deeper will be your doom. 
With this, the freedom of the universe will be yours ; the 
presence of God will be your final home, and the resources 
of infinite love will be at your service. 

But neither God nor yourself can approve any character 
which is not founded on eternal truth and on immutable 
right, which is only another name for truth in its rela- 
tion to life. Cherish, therefore, as you will your own 
lives, a love for truth simply as truth. This love, feeble 
at first, will strengthen with your strength, will arm you 
with its might, will keep you erect and faithful, while 
others, faithless, will falter and fall. And in your 
search for truth, remember that not all is true which is 
new, and not all is antiquated which is ancient. What 
good men, wise and faithful, have through the changing 
centuries found by experience to be unchanging truth to 
them, you may safely assume will, if intelligently tested, 
prove to be truth to you. 



SCIENCE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 129 

Next to the love of truth, cherish the habit of scrupu- 
lous honesty in judging yourselves. Self-conceit is a 
sign of despicable weakness ; pride and self-complacency 
are signs of still more despicable vanity and self-flattery, 
and so of dishonesty. He who knows himself thor- 
oughly and judges himself justly, will be likely to hold 
himself at a lower estimate than others can. At any 
rate, when the final rewards of life shall be distributed, 
he will have the pleasure of being bidden to a higher, 
rather than the mortification of being thrust down to a 
lower, seat than he had judged to be his due. 

So, also, finally, settle it now, once for all and for- 
ever, that, come what may, you will always dare to do 
right. Remember that a success obtained by any species 
of deception is a failure, and a failure which eternity 
cannot repair ; that a refusal to do wrong is a triumph, 
and a triumph the results of which eternity cannot 
exhaust. 

You enter active life at a time when truth and error, 
right and wrong, righteousness and iniquity are in the 
closest and deadliest conflict. Leave no one in doubt on 
which side you enlist. Eest assured in yourselves that 
truth and right and righteousness will prevail. Clouds 
and darkness may sweep over the face of society for a 
day, but justice and judgment are on the throne above 
the clouds, and in due time will be established in the 
habitations of men. Let no man nor devil, therefore, 
beguile you for an instant from your loyalty to truth, to 
righteousness, and to God. 

You will be tried ; temptations will assail you ; no 
mortal escapes them. The question is, Will you resist 

9 



130 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

them and be victors, or succumb to them and be slaves ? 
Trusting in your own strength, you will yield, and 
yielding, you will despise yourselves and be despised by 
others. Trusting in Him who, alone of all that have 
walked this earth, was tempted without sin, you will be 
victors in this world, and receive a crown of life in the 
world to come. 



THE EIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 

It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 

Matthew iv. 4. 

EVEEY man in this world comes, sooner or later, to 
a point where his way divides itself into an indefi- 
nite number of paths, some one of which he must select 
for the remainder of his journey. This point, however, 
is not reached by all men at the same period of life. 
Sometimes a kindly Providence apparently shapes every- 
thing for a man at the moment of his birth. Not till 
some sudden calamity overwhelms him is he roused into 
a conscious necessity of deciding for himself what he will 
do and become. He was dropped into a niche where he 
reposed long years without thought or care, till some 
rude shock threw him into the dusty arena of life, when, 
compelled to do or die, he first decided upon the princi- 
ples which made his conduct and his character his own. 
But to most men there comes early in life the occasion 
and the necessity for deliberation and decision. An 
educated man is ordinarily brought to his day of deliber- 
ation and choice at his graduation from college. A goal 
is then reached from which a new start is to be taken in 
life. Towards what goal in the future, he then asks, 
shall I now direct my steps, and by what route and 



132 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

methods shall it be reached ? To each of these questions 
he is forced to give himself some kind of answer. To 
assist those who here to-day have these questions before 
them, to give answers which they may never regret, is 
the object of this discourse. 

What, then, is the worthiest aim in life ? What pur- 
pose is that which, towering above all others, should sub- 
ject every other to itself ? To what final summing up of 
life ought a rational being to look calmly and steadily 
forward? What end ought a mind, supposed to have 
been enlightened and refined by a liberal education, to set 
before itself as the one comprehensive object of its unfal- 
tering pursuit ? 

To earn an honest livelihood is certainly one end in 
life, and not an unworthy one. To idle away one's days 
is to wrong one's self, and to sin against God and man- 
kind. But man cannot live by bread alone. Mere live- 
lihood is but a foundation without a structure. One 
must subsist to accomplish any end ; but to be content 
with subsisting without aiming at many and harmonious 
ends which can be rounded into a completed whole, is 
to subsist unworthily and to make life a comparative 
failure. 

Man stands connected with this world by innumerable 
ties, and every tie is an obligation which cannot be 
severed, however much it may be neglected. Every obli- 
gation understood is a word of God to man, and every 
obligation fulfilled ministers vigor to the soul. Honest 
and persistent endeavors to fulfil all the obligations of 
life bring the serenest joy and the completest life that 
man can know. The highest, purest, and worthiest life 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 133 

for man is not to attempt to live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God ; 
and thus, in fact, to make the utmost possible of himself 
of which he is capable. 

Nor is this a selfish aim. To make the utmost possible 
of one's self is to do the utmost possible in the service of 
both God and man. To rise towards one's ideal is to do 
one's daily duties. The ideal man is the man in whom 
no virtue is wanting, because no duty has been neglected. 

The connection of man's duties with his character is 
an inseparable one, and never to be lost sight of. Too 
often they are conceived as divisible, and sometimes even 
as opposites. As if any man could ever really be other- 
wise than what he actually does ; as if being and doing 
were anything else than two stages of one and the same 
thing. The truth is, duties exist for man and not man 
for his duties. All ordinances of God, all just laws of 
men, are for the improvement of man. Jesus Christ 
Himself came down from heaven to earth for the sole 
purpose of making men godlike. The supreme purpose 
of our holy religion is to enable man, under the two-fold 
discipline of law and grace, of duty and love, to make 
the utmost possible of himself as a rational and a relig- 
ious being. No worthier purpose can any man set before 
himself in this world or any other, than to lift himself 
up by the grace of God, just as fast and just as high as 
he can towards a realization of the highest type of his 
race ; not to lift himself into places of power, of emolu- 
ment, and of self-glorification, but into the possession of 
real and imperishable worth. The best of men 

" Are those of whom the Doisy world hears least/' 



134 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

and who, it may be added, care least for the noisy world's 
applause. 

Let us look, now, for a moment, at the reasons which 
may be adduced for the aim in life which we have pro- 
posed. To aim at this is to aim at the fulfilment of 
every obligation in life. To succeed in it, will be to fill 
the whole sphere of human duty. 

According to the best of catechisms, the soundest of 
philosophies and theologies, and the plain teachings of 
Scripture, the foremost duty of man is to glorify his 
Maker. Nor can science prove the contrary. What see 
we in the flowers beneath our feet and in the heavens 
above our heads ? The glory of the laws of mechanics 
and of chemistry, or the glory of the wisdom and good- 
ness, of the order and beauty, of the Eternal Mind that 
works by law ? But what the heavens and the earth do 
as the handiwork of God, man is to do as the image of 
God. The more exact the image, the more complete the 
glorification of the original. " Herein is My Father 
glorified, that ye bear much fruit. " The higher one 
rises towards the Christian ideal of manhood, the more 
effectually does he proclaim the glory of the Creator of 
man. A nation of high-souled men, with characters 
pure, stable, and symmetrical, would be an epistle from 
God for the eyes of the universe. 

Indeed, any attempt, intelligently made, to fill out a 
Christian ideal of life will prompt to the glory of God. 
Summon the forces of your being and attempt to subject 
them to your purpose ; step forth into the world resolved 
to beat down temptation and to overcome evil, and you 
will speedily find that a godless spirit in a godless world 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 135 

can accomplish any end rather than that of the ideal life 
of a Christian. If honest in your attempt, you will find 
yourself forced into the petitions, " Give us this day our 
daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
those who trespass against us. And lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the 
kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. " 

A second duty of man is self-control and a willing 
humiliation of self to the Will that rules the universe. 
This is man's hardest lesson; and this is the lesson 
which the aim in life now urged, honestly cherished, 
forces him first of all to learn. This teaches him, at the 
outset, how helpless and hopeless he is in himself. No 
knowledge humbles a man in his own sight like this; 
and none, rightly used, leads so directly to his exalta- 
tion. Such knowledge drives a man out of himself hun- 
gry and thirsty for every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God, and especially for the word that shall 
enable him to "keep his own heart," out of which are 
the issues of life. "When once he has learned to lay 
hold of the Power which alone can help him, then begins 
the process which ends in the mastery of self and in the 
consummation of a life which alone is worth living. 
" Greater is he that ruleth his own spirit than he that 
taketh a city. " 

Again, every man should be helpful to his fellowman, 
— should regard mankind as a universal brotherhood, 
whose welfare is to him a never-failing incentive to 
action. Nor will the aim to raise himself to the highest 
manhood make any one otherwise than mindful of the 
welfare of his race. Every healthy soul yearns for 



136 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

society as the river seeks the ocean. Between the indi- 
vidual and society the inlets and outlets of health or 
disease are as numerous and vital as are the powers and 
capacities of the soul. Like the tree of the forest, the 
roots of one's being are interlaced with the roots of every 
other being with whom he stands associated. No man, 
therefore, can discipline himself into nobleness of nature, 
into strength, largeness, and beauty of character, without 
taking into account what he owes to his fellowmen, as 
well as what he is ever receiving from them. He who 
absorbs and never imparts, delude himself as he may 
into the belief that his nature is expanding, is hourly 
dwarfing himself into a littleness which, himself in due 
time will not fail to despise. But he who remembers 
men, and toils for them as well as for himself, never fails 
to find that to give is better than to receive, and that the 
surest method of lifting one's self upward is in lowly, 
self -forgetful helpfulness to others. 

That no worthier object in life is possible for man 
than the perfectibility of his own character is evident 
from the capacities and laws of his being. Here both 
nature and revelation may teach us. Nature teaches 
that everything animate in this world is constituted after 
a plan, and everything, when the conditions of its life 
are duly supplied, strives ever upward toward the per- 
fectibility of its type. Stingy as may be the soil from 
which the violet springs, harsh and cruel as may be the 
skies under which it opens its petals, it nevertheless 
strives ever towards perfection in its coloring, its fra- 
grance, and its fruitage. Tear the mocking-bird from 
his native forest, cage him, shut him in your house, and 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 137 

saddening as his life is, he always does his utmost to 
sing his best. Nature everywhere struggles upward 
towards her perfect type. So also man, adverse as may 
be the circumstances of his birth, education, and associa- 
tions, perverse as may be his hereditary impulses, de- 
praved as he may be both by birth and by habit, finds 
himself ever reminded by the unchanging laws of his 
being of something nobler and worthier than his earth- 
born tastes are ever prompting him to seek. From these 
original laws of his being no amount of depravity can 
tear him away, and no amount of piety or of grace can 
ever absolve him. The demand of these laws is, that he 
shall never tarry in his course, or rest content with what 
he is. The something better than he has attained ever 
hovers above him, and every principle of his being 
prompts him to efforts to reach it. 

To what nature, blind though it be, thus impels man, 
revelation clearly and emphatically invites him. The 
author of Christianity was Himself the type and pattern 
of perfect humanity. What Christ was as man, he taught 
that men could and ought to become. " I am come, " 
said He, " that ye might have life, and that ye might 
have it more abundantly;" that ye might not only have 
life, but might know the secret of extracting the largest 
possible measure of life from every earthly duty and 
relation. Thus the first step of His holy religion to those 
who receive it, is to re-organize the forces of the soul, 
restoring every faculty to its legitimate office, and put- 
ting the whole personality upon a new career. Ideal 
humanity made real in the person. of Christ is thus, in 
a degree, made possible for those who will receive from 



138 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Christ the power to attain to it. Nor is this all. " Now 
are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what 
we shall be. " A career of inconceivable dignity and 
compass is opened before us, and every one is invited to 
strive to his utmost to fit himself to enter upon it; and 
to quicken us in the strife there stands the assurance 
that the infinite resources of Godhead are pledged to 
our support. How low and vulgar and despicable seem 
the paltry baubles which men pursue, for which they 
sacrifice ease, honor, and conscience even, forgetful 
of what they are capable of becoming, and of what 
an infinitely gracious Creator destined and invites them 
to be. 

Again, some kind of regard for one's own happiness 
must be taken into account in any comprehensive con- 
ception of the worthiest aim in life. God, history, and 
reason, alike, teach us to bethink ourselves and provide 
for this demand of our souls. The command of God is, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, " thus making 
a proper self-love to be at once the basis and the measure 
of the love due to others. And reason teaches us that 
to be and to delight in being, naturally co-exist, — that a 
healthy soul craves the blessedness of existence as natu- 
rally as the lungs crave the atmosphere ; that we might 
as well attempt to think of a watch without a main- 
spring, of a plant without life, or of an animal without 
instincts, as of a human being without the desire of hap- 
piness. And history teaches us that any attempt, under 
whatever guise of piety and religion, to extinguish or to 
ignore the soul's instinctive desire for its own happiness, 
is sure to be avenged sooner or later by an outbreak of 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 139 

that desire in forms that mar and make hideous what God 
designed to be beautiful and lovely. 

But of all the happiness which man can know, none is 
more refining or more inspiring than that which springs 
from the consciousness of personal improvement. As 
when one climbs a height, the higher he ascends, the 
purer the air he breathes and the wider and more inspirit- 
ing the scene that opens around him. Each new stage 
reached renews his energy for another and a higher. 

The influence of such a life as we are pleading for is 
plainly seen in any community where it may be lived. 
One such life is a healthful power over a wide circle. 
Like some lofty mountain with its unfailing mantle of 
snow, it is an inspiring object to distant beholders, and 
sends down its cooling currents to refresh and invigorate 
the dwellers on the dusty plains below. Ten men living 
such lives would have saved even Sodom from its over- 
throw. A nation of such in our day would soon put new 
life-blood into the veins of the race. 

Of such men every age and nation has had its need ; but 
in no nation and in no generation was that need ever 
greater than it now is in our own, and on no class of 
men was the duty of living such lives ever more impera- 
tive than it is on the educated men of these United States. 
In solving the great problem of self-government, at which 
as a people we now are so anxiously laboring, who, pray, 
shall be leaders, if not the educated men of the country ? 
Who, pray, ought to be fitted to be leaders, if not the men 
whose minds have been enlarged by knowledge, whose 
faculties have been sharpened by discipline and criticism, 
who have traced the fall of nations that vices and crimes 



140 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

have exterminated, who have read the unchangeable laws 
of God as written on the scroll of history in letters of 
blood, and on the heart of man in letters of light? 

But alas ! alas ! it is not knowledge, it is not disci- 
plined intellect, it is not familiarity with the fall of 
nations, or with the laws of God, that can save us, or that 
we so much need, as it is high character, an integrity 
which no self-interest can bribe, a sense of honor and a 
love of truth and justice which no seduction can betray. 
The land already groans under the burden of educated 
perversity, of strong and disciplined intellects absorbed 
in money-getting, of great knowledge prostituted to 
unworthy ends, of great endowments and splendid 
acquisitions sold to uses that are plainly corrupting the 
heart of the nation. In no way can an American citizen 
more directly honor God or serve his country than by 
resolving to stand 

" Among innumerable false, unmoved, 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified." 

And to permit 

" Nor number, nor example with him work 
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind 
Though single/' 

Let the action of a great convention of American 
citizens instruct us. Scheming politicians had long and 
warily laid their plans; partisanship had exhausted 
itself of its devices; the cunning and craft of politi- 
cians seemed on the eve of triumph. But to the honor 
of our common country be it said, that once and again 
have machine politics been wrecked, and wily dema- 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 141 

gogues been mutually outwitted. And more than all, 
the worth of an unimpeached and an unimpeachable 
character, the priceless value of untarnished honor and 
of unswerving fidelity to principle and duty, have been 
recognized in the selection of a candidate for the highest 
honor in the gift of fifty millions of people. There is 
yet hope for the republic. 

Another result from a more general aspiration after 
high character would be a lifting up of the so-called 
learned professions from the low level to which they are 
constantly in danger of sinking. The taunt already is 
that the learned professions are degraded into trades; 
that the lawyer sells his briefs and his legal instruments 
as the marketman sells his steaks and the tailor his coats ; 
that the doctor is more intent on the state of his ledger 
than on establishing his right to be called, in any sense, 
a good physician ; that even the minister of the Gospel is 
more disposed to be content with his perfunctory sermons, 
baptisms, marriages, and funerals, than eager to prove 
himself a fitting ambassador from God to man ; and they 
might add that the teacher, the professor in the higher 
institution of learning, is in danger of droning through 
his dreary lessons, forgetting that the best work can be 
done only by himself becoming an example and an inspi- 
ration to his pupils. 

Nor is the motive which we thus urge for high en- 
deavors in life, unworthy either the day, the place, or 
the occasion. Our callings in life, whether we will 
receive it or not, are by the vocation of God. Indivisible 
from one another are our callings and our characters. 
Thorough work in one will insure faithful work in the 



142 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

other. Thorough-going honesty in our callings is sure to 
react to the integrity and solidity and symmetry of our 
characters ; and for our callings and our characters alike 
we shall find ourselves compelled at the last to give 
account both to ourselves and to God. 

Again, were the acquisition of high personal virtue 
made the supreme aim in life, more commonly than it 
now is, it would do something towards relieving the pre- 
vailing religion of our day from one grave indictment 
brought against it. The doctrine of salvation by faith 
and grace, it is claimed, fails to produce the highest type 
of manhood ; that, as commonly taught, it makes men 
more intent on escaping the consequences of sin than it 
does on aspiring to the eternal awards of virtue ; that to 
be a Christian in our day is no guaranty of an integrity 
above that of the rest of mankind. The reproach lies in 
the apparent truth of the charges. But the fault is not 
in the doctrine, but in the one-sided statement of it. 
Here, as always, a half-truth is a whole error. In whom 
do we believe if not in Him who alone of all the beings 
who ever trod this earth was the perfect man ? And what 
is faith, if not a power that tranforms into a likeness 
to the object of our trust? And what does Christianity 
more need to-day, in the pulpit, on the street, in the 
counting-room, at the bar, at the fireside, than truer illus- 
trations of what Christianity is designed to accomplish for 
man as a denizen of this world, as well as a candidate for 
glory in another? In no way is Christianity more mis- 
represented than by the pinched and shrivelled type of 
piety presented by many who claim to be its only just 
expounders. And in no way can Christianity be so 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 143 

effectually commended to the intelligent minds of this ob- 
serving and thinking age, as by putting before it, in liv- 
ing example, the best that Christianity can accomplish. 

Again, to aim at making the utmost possible of one's 
self in life, is to be forearmed against a fatal despair. 
One of the startling things of this day of Christian en- 
lightenment is the rapidly growing number of suicides. 
Not alone the infidel and the atheist, but the avowed 
believer in God and His Christ, is among them. In vain 
do you denounce them as craven-hearted cowards, as 
criminals in the sight of God and man. They would tell 
you, could they be summoned to testify, that they found 
life insupportable. And why ? Simply because the 
little springs at which they sat down to drink had dried 
up. They had attempted to live by bread alone ; and 
when it failed, despair seized them, and they rushed out 

of the world ; 

" hope died 
And fear was lost in agony." 

What now against this disease of despair can be made 
a sufficient and available safeguard ? One answer is plain. 
Tie the man down, as you do the tent that is threatened 
by a storm, by guys that shall hold him firmly to the 
earth. Tell him that he must not live by bread alone, 
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God. Help him to see that every tie to earth is a duty 
enjoined of God; that the doing of every duty will be 
meat and drink to his soul; that the doing of all the 
duties of life, in the spirit and grace of Christ, will round 
him out into a contented and happy man. If you can 
help him to see and understand this, he is safe. 



144 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

The question now arises, How can this great aim in 
life be made a real and effective purpose ? Manifestly, 
first of all, there must be reflection. Ignorance is doubt- 
less the fruitful mother of vices, but not of all. 

41 Evil is wrought by want of thought 
As well as want of heart." 

Knowledge is worthless in the guidance of life, without 
a just application of it; and a due application of it is 
impossible without thoughtfulness. And reflection 
should be at the beginning of life, or it may come too 
late. 

A second requisite is, the remembrance that the laws 
of God and of our personal being are as unchangeable as 
God Himself, and that man can no more escape from 
them, or evade them, than he can escape from, or evade 
himself. Every part of the compound nature of man is 
bound to every other part by laws as unyielding as fate. 
Co-equal with the need of reflection, is the need of un- 
shrinking submission to these laws. The body has its 
demands, and will not fail to avenge both neglect and 
abuse of itself. The mind, maltreated, curses and 
blights its possessor. And the fearful forces of that 
obscure realm of the emotions, the affections, the desires, 
and the volitions unrestrained by the rigid enforcement 
of law, rising in rebellion, overwhelm in hopeless ruin 
what was intended to be a temple of God. Without an 
eager desire, therefore, to know, and an unyielding pur- 
pose to comply with these laws of our three-fold nature, — 
laws so interlaced and inseparable in their action, and so 
inexorable in their several domains as to make man the 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 145 

most fearfully and wonderfully made of all the works of 
God, — there can be no approximation in any degree to 
the type of true manhood. 

Another indispensable requisite unquestionably is, 
clear and settled convictions in respect to truth and 
duty. There is no disguising the fact that conflicting 
theories and systems of thought have shaken the confi- 
dence of many educated men in sundry traditional beliefs. 
It is evident enough, also, that a loss of confidence in 
some beliefs is fast generating a general spirit of indiffer- 
ence towards all positive religious truth. Doubt, distrust, 
and disbelief are becoming the distinguishing character- 
istics of our time. To cherish convictions which cost 
self-denial and bring one into collision with indifference 
and untruth is to expose one's self to the charge of nar- 
row-mindedness, if not of bigotry. In the moral history 
of the race, we are threatened with a reversal of the his- 
torical order of the physical world, with a supplanting of 
moral vertebrates with moral mollusks. But without 
clear conceptions of the eternal verities of our being, 
without a conviction of their authority which no flattery 
nor blandishment can beguile, no character can be formed 
which will be worth the possessing. A character with- 
out a foundation of solid and settled convictions is a 
structure upon the sand. Living convictions, born of 
truths that set the souls of men aglow and astir, are the 
only forces that can lift up and carry forward this race 
of ours. I believe, said the Psalmist, and therefore 
speak. We believe and therefore speak, said the apos- 
tles of Jesus ; and because the Psalmist believed and sang, 
and apostles believed, and spake, and acted, the starless 

10 



146 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

and worn-out heavens of heathenism vanisned, and the 
new heavens and the new earth of Christianity came to 
gladden the hearts of men. 

One other requisite remains, without which all others 
are in vain. In every age men have tried the light of 
their own understandings, and it has misled them ; they 
have relied on the strength of their own wills, and it has 
failed them. But who ever asked in sincerity the help 
of God, and his petition was denied to him ? Who ever 
really trusted in Christ, and found that his faith had 
wrecked him on the shoals of error or on the rocks of 
vice ? The words of Jesus are as true to-day as when 
He uttered them : " Without me ye can do nothing ; " 
and the words of the apostle Paul are as true for us as they 
were for him : " I can do all things through Christ, who 
strengthens me. " The root of all that is best and grand- 
est in the achievement of the human soul is in its faith, 
and in strictest accordance with the object of its trust 
will always be the measure and the kind of what the soul 
achieves. Believing on the Son of God, man is not only 
saved from his sins and fears, from all that dwarfs and 
mars, but, renewed in the spirit and temper of his mind, 
he is put upon a career in which he need not stop till all 
shall be accomplished of which he is capable here, or 
which the Eternal Mind has prepared for him hereafter. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : The record of 
your college life has now been sealed up, and has gone 
forward to the great day of accounts. What your indi- 
vidual record has been, each of you knows for himself, 
and knows that it cannot now be altered. But what 



THE RIGHT AIM IN LIFE. 147 

shall the record of your future be ? What kind of aims 
do you propose to yourselves for the remainder of your 
lives ? To these questions, consciously or unconsciously, 
you are here and now, under an omniscient eye, giving 
answer. Let the answers be such as you shall never 
desire to recall. That they may be wisely made, acquaint 
yourselves with God, and so be at peace with Him and at 
rest in yourselves. Then will you be able to see clearly, 
and to decide wisely ; and having decided, to work with 
a spirit and a steadiness of purpose, without which noth- 
ing great or good can ever be accomplished either in 
yourselves or for mankind. 

Each of you is to build a character which shall be the 
habitation of his spirit forever. You will bring some- 
thing into its structure out of every relation in life. For 
that structure there can be but one sure foundation, and 
that is in a humble and unyielding faith in the personal 
Jesus Christ. 

But these words of counsel need not be multiplied. 
All that has been said in the discourse has been in- 
tended for you. Eemember that the great secrets of 
success in life are to be found only in faithfulness to 
God, in kindness to others, and in the strictest justice 
towards yourselves. 

But what you propose to do in life, begin to do at 

once; 

" The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, 

Except the deed go with it." 

One and another of your class has fallen by your side 
since your college days began. The remainder of life 
may be short for some of you, but its results will be 



148 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

eternal. Kef use, therefore, from this hour, no just task ; 
neglect no known duty ; fail not in your loyalty to God 
and His Christ, — and, be your days many or few, you will 
rear within yourselves characters strong, beautiful, and 
approved both of God and of men. 



THE SEAECH FOE TEUTH. 

Ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the 

truth. 

2 Timothy ii. 7. 

BUT in this is there anything blameworthy or to be 
regretted ? May it not be that the famous saying 
of Lessing is as applicable to moral and religious truth 
as to the truths of speculative philosophy ? His words 
are " Did the Almighty, holding in His right hand 
' Truth, ' and in His left, ' Search after truth, ' deign to 
proffer me the one I might prefer, in all humility, but 
without hesitation, I should ask for ' Search after truth. ' " 
May it not be that a perpetual search after moral and 
religious truth would be better for man than the actual 
and assured possession of it ? Let us see. 

We doubtless delude ourselves when we think that 
with the acquisition of the objects of our pursuit we 
shall be able to sit down contented and at rest. We for- 
get that every goal we reach becomes at once a starting 
point from which we hurry away in a race for another. 
Nothing acquired can, of itself, ever fill the mind with 
complete satisfaction. Every desire gratified becomes 
the parent of others ; a want that is supplied to-day 
reveals others to-morrow, whose existence was before 
unsuspected. 



150 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

There is reason, therefore, for the general statement 
that the pleasure of pursuit is greater than the pleasure of 
possession. The exhilaration of movement is more to 
be coveted than the repose of inactivity. And yet, 
movement unaccompanied by perception of stages of 
progress is not exhilarating, nor does it fail to become 
wearisome. The pleasure of movement is the pleasure 
of conscious progress ; it is the satisfaction that springs 
from observing the rapidly-reached and passed goals that 
mark our advance towards the ultimate prize at which 
we aim. Grant that the pleasure of acquiring wealth, 
knowledge, or fame is greater than the pleasure of pos- 
sessing these, yet this is true only because of the gratifi- 
cation that is felt in noticing the successive steps that 
take one onward towards the goal of his ambition. If 
there be disappointment at the final goal, it is because no 
other lies beyond it ; the pleasure felt at each successive 
step was but a degree of the pleasure hoped for at the 
end. 

But if pursuit be better than possession, why is it a 
matter of reproach that one should be ever learning and 
never able to come to a knowledge of the truth ? The 
reason is plain. The reproach is not that one is ever 
learning the truth, and only progressively coming to a 
full knowledge of it, — this were commendable; but the 
reproach of the text was, that while certain persons 
were diligently learning about the truth, were giving 
their attention to subjects only accidentally or at best 
but incidentally connected with it, they were never able 
to come to a real and practical knowledge of the truth 
itself. 



THE SEAKCH FOR TRUTH. 151 

And indeed to be ever learning any subject and never 
coming to a real and definite knowledge of it, would be 
both discreditable and disquieting. To learn and never 
know is to fill the mind with weariness and disgust. In 
the practical affairs of life no state is more painful than 
that of uncertainty and doubt in matters where knowl- 
edge is possible, and where it must be had if failure 
is to be avoided. Even where to know is to be 
disappointed, knowledge is preferable to uncertainty. 
" It is a relief even to know the worst. " And on the 
other hand, man is never more exultant than when con- 
scious of a knowledge of what he has in hand. 

Now all that has been thus said is doubly true of a 
knowledge of moral and religious truth. It is specially 
so of the satisfaction accompanying a knowledge of it. 
With every new acquisition in the pursuit of it comes a 
new joy. Over its accumulated stores the soul rejoices 
as it can over no other possessions. Wealth never satis- 
fies except as a means to something higher and better 
than itself. Knowledge brings joy only because it opens 
windows through which we have wider views of the uni- 
verse. Wealth also has its limits as a means ; and 
knowledge of science, even the largest, is circumscribed 
in its power to satisfy. No amount of wealth can ever 
purchase character, or ever satisfy the yearnings of the 
heart ; no degree of knowledge of things can ever fill the 
aching void of the moral nature. But the power of moral 
and religious truth is commensurate with every want of 
the soul. It alone can teach the right use of wealth ; it 
alone can transform knowledge into true wisdom. 

But here the question arises whether there can be any 



152 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

certainty that the knowledge of such truth as we have 
been speaking of be attainable ; whether the most careful 
search for it can ever take us, after all, beyond the region 
of mere probability. The question is a reasonable one. 
Let us see what answer can be given to it. 

It must be admitted that our knowledge of some things 
in this world is exact, complete, and demonstrable. We 
know, for instance, that water is composed of the two 
simple elements, hydrogen and oxygen. We know this 
for absolute certainty, because we can resolve water into 
these elements, and again can combine the elements into 
water. We know also that within a single ray of white 
light lie all the colors of the rainbow. We know this, 
because out of the single ray we can educe all the colors 
of the rainbow, and all these colors we can gather and 
combine again into the single ray of white light. Thus 
far, our knowledge of water and light is assured. What 
light really is we never may be able absolutely to deter- 
mine. What was the origin of water, or why it exists 
as water, we may never be able to say. And so of a 
thousand other things in nature which conceal from us 
their secrets, although our knowledge of their existence 
and of some of their properties is as definite and 
demonstrable as is the knowledge we have of our own 
existence. So much for our knowledge of the truths of 
nature. 

Turn we now to moral and religious truth. And here 
shall we, like the Eoman Governor Pilate, at the first 
sound of the word, turn on our heels and sneeringly ask : 
What is truth ? or shall we, with the devotees of physi- 
cal science, assume that nothing can ever be knowable 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 153 

to man which cannot be tested by the senses ? If man 
be regarded as the creation of an omnipotent and omnis- 
cient Creator, is it reasonable to suppose him to have been 
tossed forth into a waste, howling wilderness of uncer- 
tainty, doubt, and despair, and not to have been endowed 
with the capacities, and surrounded with the sources of 
enlightenment, sufficient to give him some positive knowl- 
edge of his duties in life ? Or, if we abandon the notion 
of a direct creation of man; if we regard the human 
intelligence, with all its powers and capacities, as the 
product of natural forces alone, is it credible that this 
intelligence should know the laws and truths of matter 
for certainty — laws that, at the closest, affect it but 
remotely — and never be able to certify to itself the laws 
and truths that immediately concern its own life and 
peace ? 

But here let us apply for a moment the scientific 
method in testing the trustworthiness of our knowledge 
of the truths of morality and religion. Let us see if our 
knowledge of these is less definite and assured than is 
our knowledge of the laws of physical science. Here is 
a human character ; let us analyze it. We find it to be 
the product of certain fixed and well-known moral prin- 
ciples. These principles, put into practice, are just as 
sure to produce the type of character in which we have 
found them embodied, as hydrogen and oxygen, com- 
pounded in given quantities, are certain to give us water. 
Take the highest type of Christian character — gentle, 
pure, honest, patient, reverent, bold — and resolve every 
virtue composing it into the Christian truth, which each 
virtue embodies ; and can there be any more doubt about 



154 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

the reality of those truths, or about the trustworthiness 
of our knowledge of them, or about the fact that all the 
truths are embodied in the New Testament idea of the 
person of Christ, than there is about the reality of the 
colors of the rainbow, or about the trustworthiness of our 
knowledge of these colors, or about the fact that the 
colors are all embodied in every ray of white light that 
falls from the heavens above us ? A criticism that can 
see indubitable reality in the truths of physical science, 
and can find nothing but prudential maxims in the truths 
of morality, and nothing but fiction and fancy in the 
truths of religion, is not the criticism of real science nor 
of a sound philosophy. 

But supposing the reality of religious truth to be 
admitted, and the trustworthiness of our knowledge of it 
to be established, the questions still recur, are there no 
obstacles that lie in the way of our search for it ? Are 
there not conditions without which the search can never 
be conducted to a successful issue. Are there no tests 
by which the identity of truth may be determined when 
found? To these several questions let us, for a few 
minutes, give our attention. 

And first as respects the obstacles. These, especially 
in our day, are not few nor slight, but they are chiefly 
in ourselves. And foremost among these is the existing 
and prevailing style of criticism. Sound criticism, let 
us never forget, is always in order. Human reason 
demands it. Christianity in all its teachings fosters it, 
challenging a scrutiny of its own claims, and by its in- 
junctions prompting its adherents to look closely into the 
claims of whatever else is presented for their acceptance. 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 155 

" Prove all things. " " Believe not every spirit, but try 
the spirits. " " Every one of us shall give account of him- 
self to God. " Christianity itself tried its own critical 
powers on the heathenisms it supplanted ; and through- 
out the Christian centuries the more thoroughly men 
have entered into its spirit, the more careful they have 
been in their scrutiny of what was to be believed and 
what was to be practised. Nothing is more foreign to 
the spirit of the New Testament than the spirit of blind 
submission to hearsay, to tradition, to majority votes, or 
to ecclesiastical authority. It teaches every man to 
think, to inquire, to scrutinize, and then to decide for 
himself. Intelligent and sound criticism can trace its 
lineage directly to the New Testament Scriptures. But 
criticism, like everything else that is good, may be per- 
verted. This, like many another offspring of Chris- 
tianity, has been adopted by aliens, and so trained as to 
be turned against its parent. 

Not a little of the criticism of moral and religious 
truth in our day is both unsound and unintelligent. 
Happily, much of the reckless criticism of the earlier 
historical records of Christianity, once so prevalent, is 
seen to have had no real foundation. And that kind of 
criticism, now in the ascendant, that accepts nothing as 
true which is not directly taught, or at least supported, 
by physical science, is a one-eyed and a one-legged criti- 
cism, that cannot be trusted to conduct us safely out of 
the wandering mazes of modern thought. Physical sci- 
ence is admirable in its own sphere ; equally so are 
philosophy and religion in theirs. But the conclusions 
of one can never be safely taken as premises for the rea- 



156 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

sonings of the other ; neither can the conclusions of one 
be justly used in combating the conclusions of the other. 
He who attempts to reason from the one to the other is 
as irrational as he who would attempt to travel by land 
and by water in one and the same vehicle. 

The attempt, furthermore, to subject all moral and 
religious truth to the processes and conclusions of physi- 
cal science is suicidal. The attempt can be made only 
by denying the trustworthiness of those elementary first 
truths which all minds accept and, of necessity, reason 
from. It can be made only by assuming that nothing 
can be trusted that cannot be subjected to the tests of the 
senses. But the assumption of certain first truths is com- 
mon alike to religion and to all sciences, whether of 
mind, morals, or physics. Physical science assumes its 
own first truths and takes them along with it at every 
step of its progress. It talks of matter, and of force, and 
of physical laws, of atoms and molecules, and of space- 
filling ether, as of the most indubitable realities and 
truths ; but on what ground, pray, except of the trust- 
worthiness of the primary and necessary intuitions of the 
mind? But if the mind's necessary and intuitive recog- 
nition of force, and of law, and of atoms, or of whatever 
else is external to itself must be trusted, why repudiate 
its primary and necessary intuitions of what is internal 
and essential, and vital to its own existence and action ? 
If our talk about matter, resting as it does on the intui- 
tions of the mind, may be thus dogmatic and confident, 
why may not so much of our talk about morals and re- 
ligion as rests on like intuitions, be equally confident ? 
Does not the critic who objects to the intuitional basis 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 157 

of our moral and religious truth, like the foolish peasant 
in his reckless pruning, cut away the branch he sits on ? 
In undertaking to undermine and blow up the citadel of 
religion, are not these critics involving themselves, as 
well as those whom they attack, in a common destruc- 
tion? 

Another obstacle in the way of our search for religious 
truth is the spirit of indifference. This is not an obsta- 
cle due to a passing fashion peculiar to our own time, 
but it is a chronic condition of human nature. It has 
two causes : the first, a pre-occupation of mind ; the 
second, a low estimate of the worth of truth and of what 
it accomplishes for us. As to pre-occupation of mind, 
the provisions for our physical nature in this world are 
so profuse, they form so essential a part of the whole 
organization of society, they appeal to us so immedi- 
ately, and minister so largely to present satisfaction, that 
before we are aware of it we are engrossed with the tan- 
gible, and indifferent to the invisible. We are too well 
pleased with what we have in hand, or can easily reach, 
to be anxious about what lies outside or beyond. As to 
the low estimate, the worth of what can be seen, and 
handled, and tasted, is easily appreciated. The advan- 
tage of material things in their hold on the attention of 
man is thus greatly preponderant over that of immaterial 
truth. The awards of the two also greatly differ. In 
material things, the connection between exertion and 
results is so close and outwardly apparent, that interest 
in pursuit never flags. The awards of moral and relig- 
ious truth are in the character ; they are inward, subtile, 
spiritual, and apparently remote. We walk by faith, 



158 BACCALAUREATE SEftMONS. 

and not by sight ; and poor, weak human nature prefers 
that which can be easily grasped to that which can be 
had only by toiling and patiently waiting for it. But 
indifference, whatever its cause, never yet permitted any 
man to accomplish anything great or good in any pursuit, 
never allowed any one to work his way out of illusions 
into realities; in morals and religion, indifference is 
fatal as death. 

Another obstacle with many, but not with all minds, 
is a positive dislike of religious truth; its exclusiveness 
is uncongenial to their tastes. It never flatters, never 
compromises, never stoops to expedients. It is intoler- 
ant of prejudice and of all error. Its method of dealing 
with whatever stands in its way is always short, sharp, 
and decisive. Its tone is always abrupt, and its demands 
explicit and unqualified. Entertained as a guest, it 
turns all other guests out of doors. It will be absolute 
master, or it will not tarry. And all this is extremely 
distasteful to the ease-loving and politic. To them truth 
is ill-natured and disagreeable ; its society is, therefore, 
declined and its acquaintance ignored. 

The truth, furthermore, refuses to be the guest of any 
one whose life is devoted to sensuality. It will keep 
no company with lust. Its scourge is always in its hand, 
ready to drive out from its presence every intruding pas- 
sion. It will endure the presence of nothing "that de- 
fileth, or worketh abomination, or maketh a lie. " To 
all evil-minded men the truth is unendurably repulsive. 
They hate it as did Ahab, the prophet, because it " never 
prophesieth good unto them but only evil. " 

Many dislike the truth also, because it is ever break- 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 159 

ing the illusions of the present and throwing in upon 
them the light of the future. They dislike anticipation ; 
they are afraid of what is to come ; they hate the truth 
because it forces on their attention the connection of 
what is with that which is to be. 

If, now, we be thus beset with difficulties in our search 
after truth, it is evident that we can come to a real 
knowledge of it only through the most painstaking care, 
and under conditions that cannot be slighted. Let us 
glance at these conditions for a moment. 

The first that we will mention is a supreme regard for 
the truth, or preference for it to whatever else can be 
brought into comparison with it. Between it and our 
purpose to possess it, stand obstacles deeper and wider 
and higher than stand between us and any other object. 
Nothing can carry us triumphantly into its presence but 
a purpose supreme over every other. Our greatest 
calamity is that the obstacles are in ourselves and not in 
the truth, or in its surroundings; they are in our tastes 
and habits of mind, in our present and our pleasant self- 
delusions. Out from under the control of these and into 
the presence and possession of the real and true, nothing 
can take us but a desire that shall swallow up every 
other, a master passion that shall burn within us until it 
is transmuted into an energy that nothing can resist. 

And why should not this be the one supreme passion 
of the soul ? What possible end in life can be superior, 
can in any degree be compared with an assured knowl- 
edge of the truth ? What are all other ends worth with- 
out that ? What is life itself worth, if, while it lasts, it 
be a conscious and constant illusion ; and when it ends, 



160 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

if it end in disappointment and despair? No! no! Let me 
know what is ; let me know what I am ; let me know 
what I stand on and am preparing for; let me know what 
I owe to my fellow-beings and what is due from me to 
the Eternal and Invisible One, and I can face life and its 
trials with composure ; I can bend my back to its bur- 
dens with delight ; I can fight the good fight of faith, 
knowing in what and in Whom I have believed, and 
assured that in the end all will be well. Surely no man 
is willing to be deceived in any earthly pursuit, and why 
should any be willing to be deceived in respect to what 
may come when earthly pursuits are ended ? 

A second requisite in coming to a knowledge of the 
truth is a prompt compliance with its exactions. These 
are not exorbitant, but they are unyielding. Truth, 
standing before the intellect as an abstraction, comes 
before the will as law clothed with awful authority. 
Thus it demands, first of all, instant obedience. If it 
comes to us, it will not be kept standing in the ante-room 
waiting our convenience. It will be taken at once into 
the inner court of the soul, or it will not enter. And it 
comes in the beginning, not like the summer sun in the 
fulness of its glory, but like a lantern shining in a dark 
place. And its faintest glimmer must be heeded, or it 
will not wax into a dawn ; nor the dawn into the bright- 
ness of the day. If it throws its light outward on our 
pathway it will make plain to us but a single step at a 
time, and a step that must be taken or no second step 
will be revealed to us. 

So also there must be an unconditional surrender of 
whatever is offensive to the truth. Prejudice and error 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 161 

and appetite and passion and the whole brood of evil 
spirits must be banished from the soul or truth will never 
become its guest. The chambers of the human soul are 
capacious enough to entertain the Infinite and Almighty 
One, but the demons of evil thoughts and evil passions 
congregating there make them into dens that are full of 
everything foul and loathsome. The eye of the soul, un- 
dimmed in its vision, can command a whole hemisphere 
of thought, but one small vice may shut the soul into 
blank darkness. Man also is endowed with the power of 
endless progress in his knowledge of truth ; but one evil 
thought, microscopically small, may so eat into the mar- 
row of his soul as to leave him forever crippled and in 
ignorance. 

A third and the most essential requisite of all is an 
inward appreciation of the truth. Nor is this a requisite 
in morals and religion alone. Fitness to appreciate is 
equally indispensable to any kind of real knowledge. 
Nor does fitness to appreciate one kind qualify for an 
appreciation of another. One man may be incapable of 
following a mathematical demonstration, another of 
mastering a language, another of appreciating the finer 
qualities of style, another of discerning beauty in the 
skies, in a landscape, or in a work of art. To whatever 
kind of knowledge, therefore, we would invite the atten- 
tion of any one, if we would not labor in vain, we must 
first of all see to it that he have the inward taste and 
capacity to perceive and understand. 

Nor is it true that to require this condition is equiva- 
lent to requiring that one should already possess what it 

is proposed to impart to him. Surely the conditions for 

11 



162 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

seeing an object are not the sight of it. The strength 
necessary to exertion is not itself the exertion. The eye, 
without which there can be no sight, certainly is not 
itself the sight. Neither is capacity to appreciate a 
given work of art to be confounded with actual knowledge 
of the work. The capacity for appreciation of art or of 
beauty in nature must doubtless be germinally within, 
or it never could be revealed nor cultivated, and the 
capacity must be in full exercise in every act of apprecia- 
tion, and yet the capacity and the art are as distinct as 
the power and its exercise. 

Nor, on the other hand, is there any good reason for 
affirming that, to require a right state of mind for acquir- 
ing a knowledge of the truth, is like begging the ques- 
tion in reasoning; that it requires a predisposition to 
accept what is congenial rather than what is absolutely 
true; that the truth found is in fact within us rather 
than without; in the language of the schools is subjective 
rather than objective. Let us see about this. One man 
has no taste for mathematics, and is incapable of under- 
standing an intricate problem. To another the same 
problem is as clear as a sunbeam, and thrills him with 
delight. Are mathematics, therefore, unreal and the 
problem non-existent except in the mind of him who 
understands it and is pleased with it ? An Indian chief 
is pleased with feathers and paint and a gay-colored 
blanket ; a civilized man prefers a clean skin, a modest 
hat, and a neutral-colored coat. Do the feathers and 
paint and gay colored blanket exist only in the mind of 
the chief, and the hat and the coat only in the mind of 
the civilized ? One man likes prose, another poetry; one 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 163 

is pleased with elaborate and brilliant rhetoric, another 
with simple and unadorned thought. Are the distinc- 
tions between prose and poetry, rhetorical ornament and 
baldness of thought, distinctions, therefore, existing only 
in the minds of those who are severally pleased with 
them ? Nay ; things are real, and the distinctions be- 
tween things are realities. All truths are realities, and 
the truths of morality and religion are the most intensely 
real of all. 

But there are distinctions among the requisites for 
different kinds of knowledge, and a difference in account- 
ability for their absence. For some kinds of knowledge 
some men are helplessly disqualified. Incapacity for 
mathematics may be without remedy, color-blindness 
incurable. The perception of beauty, like the sense of 
humor and the gift of wit, may forever be denied to some 
natures. But the susceptibility for moral and religious 
truth is one and identical with human reason, and a 
relish for the truth, and a fitness to appreciate it, is always 
present where right reason is unhindered in its function. 
If wanting, it is because the eye of the soul has been 
darkened, because reason has been perverted in its func- 
tion, and the moral affections have been corrupted. And 
if wanting it can be created ; if lost it can be regained. 
If we do not like the truth it is because we are false to 
ourselves ; because we are willing to be deceived ; be- 
cause we have been willing to sell our birthright for 
what is paltry and worthless and self -destroying. 

If now moral and religious truth really exist, if under 
given conditions it may be made our own, the final ques- 
tion recurs : Are there any sufficient tests by which I can 



164 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

be assured that I have found it ? Let us glance at one or 
two of these. 

First of all, truth humbles one in his own eyes. It is 
always luminous, and light makes manifest, and there 
is nothing that so humbles a man in his own estimation 
as to see himself as he really is. But if what we regard 
as truth fills us with self-conceit and pride and contempt 
for others, it is manifestly error and not truth which we 
have embraced. It has been justly said that when Paul 
was a Pharisee he thought he was blameless ; but when 
he became a Christian, he accounted himself the chief of 
sinners. The light of truth, like the presence of Deity, 
fills us with awe. He who sees it cries out with Job : 
" I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now 
mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself and 
repent in dust and ashes. " 

Again, truth is self-witnessing ; it brings with it its 
own credentials ; its very presence and power certify to its 
identity ; it is fitted to the soul of man, and the soul of 
man is fitted to it. Thev are so fitted, not because either 
one was made for the other, but because they are counter- 
parts of each other. Truth is the soul's mirror, reveal- 
ing it to itself, revealing its capacities, its necessities, its 
duties, its destination. It is a mirror, because it is the 
soul's better self confronting the actual self. It is the 
truth, because it is a revelation of realities, laying bare 
what is, and so proclaiming what must be. 

Again, truth is content with no single achievement, 
never stops with the fulfilment of its minor offices. It 
attacks not single errors, but all error ; is never satisfied 
with mere pruning of vices, but lays the axe at the root 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 165 

of all vice. It seats itself at once in the centre of the 
soul, and begins a reconstruction of the whole being. 
Implacable, it spares no evil ; impartial, it leaves no 
part of our nature uncontrolled. It is never content with 
single virtues, but demands all virtue. It will tolerate no 
dwarfed or one-sided character, but demands a completed 
symmetry. Its command is : " Whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there 
be any virtue, and if there be anything praiseworthy, 
think on these things. " " And besides this, giving all 
diligence, add to your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, 
knowledge ; and to knowledge, patience ; and to patience, 
godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly-kindness ; and to 
brotherly -kindness, charity." Truth builds a character 
that is composed of every virtue, and crowns it with a 
charity that never fails. 

Need I remind this audience that the truth we have 
thus described once dwelt on earth in human form ? That 
the truth thus incarnate, though in humblest guise to the 
common eye, was yet, to the eye that could see and the 
ear that could hear, clothed with the majesty and spoke 
with the authority of Godhead. " To this end was I 
born, " said Jesus, " and for this cause came I into the 
world, that I should bear witness to the truth. I am 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Every one that is of 
the truth heareth my voice. " He who thus lived and 
spoke eighteen hundred years ago, lives and speaks to us 
to-day. Shall we spend our days in learning and un- 
learning, in questioning and guessing and doubting and 



166 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

hoping and fearing, when it is so easy once for all to find 
our way into the presence of Him who, for us and for all 
men, is the Truth now and forever ? Amen ! 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : Four years of your 
lives have been spent in associated study. That associa- 
tion is now to be broken up. Under such guidance as 
has been given you, you have been working in various 
departments of knowledge. That you should have 
learned nothing in all these years is incredible. It is 
not too much, perhaps, to suppose that from the time of 
your coming together you have every day been learning 
something. How much of this has been worthless — 
how much may need in the future to be unlearned — it is 
needless now to inquire. Something, doubtless, has been 
learned that will abide with you till all knowledge shall 
vanish away in the presence of the uncreated Light. 

But the one question I wish to invite you each to 
answer in the secret of his own heart to-day is this : In 
all these years of your college life, ever learning as you 
have been, have you come any nearer than you were at the 
outset to that knowledge of the eternal verities, the 
truths of God, the truth as it is in Jesus, without which 
all other knowledge will prove in the end to be worth- 
less, and possibly a. delusion and a snare ? All knowl- 
edge and all truth are but parts of an infinite whole; 
links of continuous chains, so that strike whatever link 
you may, tenth or ten thousandth, you strike a chain that, 
followed up, will bring you to the very throne of eternal 
truth. If hitherto you have rested only in the passing 
present, is not this the day in which you should begin 



THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 167 

to look seriously into the significancy of life ? The pres- 
ent never stays. Nothing earthly abides. Self, truth, and 
God alone abide everlastingly the same. With truth 
and God on your side, eternal peace is yours ; with truth 
and God against you, endless unrest and despair. 

The war between truth and error is fiercer to-day than 
ever before. Of this war you cannot, if you would, be 
idle spectators. On the one side or the other, by the 
very necessities of your nature, you must be combatants. 
Bids for your enlistment on one side will be loud, numer- 
ous, persistent, and boastful ; on the other you will hear, 
in tones that are low and slow, but articulate and dis- 
tinct, the words : " Fight the good fight ; be thou faithful 
unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. " What 
were the whole world worth to you should you purchase 
it at the cost of a single truth. Better that you were 
now and here blotted out of existence, than that you 
should live slaves to your own senses and die at the last 
despicable in your own eyes and in the eyes of God and 
of all good men. 

Often in the fight for the just, the good, and the true, 
you will find yourselves under sunless and starless 
heavens. Black clouds will hang loweringly above you, 
but remember that they are clouds, 

"whose nether face 
To grovelling mortals frowns and darkens all, 
But on whose billowy backs, from man concealed, 
The glaring sunbeams play." 

Let not your faith in God forsake you, and in due time 
the Sun of Bighteousness shall shine upon you with heal- 
ing in His beams. 



168 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

If your fight in life is to be for the right, the real, and 
the true, strike your first blow for it to-day. To- 
morrow is not yours ; it never may be. Once and again, 
in your college days, you have heard the lesson : " What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; 
for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor 
wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. " A classmate 
dropped from your ranks in death ; his work was done, 
his warfare ended. A revered and much loved teacher, 
in the fulness of his strength, in the prime of his powers, 
fell battling for the truth. Of life nothing is certain 
but its end and its awards. Sure only of these, let us 
stand undismayed each in his lot. 

" Solemn before us 
Veiled, the dark portal, 
Goal of all mortal ; 
Stars silent o'er us, 
Graves under us silent, 
But heard are the voices, 
Voice of the Sages, 
The worlds and the ages ; 
' Choose well, your choice is 
Brief and yet endless.' " 



THE SUEE VICTOEY OF FAITH. 

Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth 

that Jesus is the Son of God ? 

1 John v. 5. 

NO human life was ever worthily lived that was not 
also a life of struggle and conflict. No kind of 
life, from the lowest vegetive to the highest spiritual, 
can maintain its existence except by resistance to forces 
that, unresisted, would sooner or later extinguish it. The 
vital germ of the seed must struggle against the rainfall 
that threatens to drown it, against the cold of night that 
threatens to freeze it, and against the heat of day that 
threatens to scorch it. Animal life can preserve itself 
only by incessant struggle with forces that, left to them- 
selves, would destroy it. And what is true of the natural 
life is equally true of the intellectual and the moral ; 
these cannot live except by struggles with obstacles that 
would shut them into darkness and death. 

And by a universal law of compensation, it so happens 
that the very struggles necessary to the maintenance of 
any species of life are the very means by which alone the 
fulness of the life is attainable. Vicissitude of storm 
and calm, of cloud and sunshine, of cold and heat in- 
vigorate the plant. Battling with the forces of nature 
develops sinew and muscle, and gives health of nerve. 
Grappling with the problems of science and the great 



170 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

truths of philosophy ministers strength to the intellect. 
The moral life of the soul becomes robust and healthy 
only through endurance of trials and victory over temp- 
tations. 

There is a profound philosophy in the injunction : 
" Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations. " 

And every kind of natural life is endowed with an 
inherent power to fight its own way in the world. The 
light-winged seed that floats in the evening air drops into 
the rich mould of a cleft of the rock, shoots downward its 
delicate rootlets into the narrow depths, and upward its 
tender stem into the inviting air; the tender stem be- 
comes the huge trunk with outspreading branches, and 
the delicate rootlets the giant roots that crowd asunder 
the oppressive rocks. The tilted slab of the sidewalk, 
beneath which runs the root of the shade-tree, proclaims 
the presence of a life power that can push its own way 
in spite of obstructions. The infant intellect, surrounded 
by objects that rouse it to thought, waxes into au energy 
that refuses to be stayed by any barrier. But the moral 
life of the soul, weak from its birth, and enfeebled by 
the pestilent atmosphere of what the Scriptures call " the 
world, * must have divine help, or it sickens and dies. 

" The world " is human society actuated by principles 
that exclude all regard for the character and will of the 
Supreme Being. It denotes a spirit and a policy that 
find all motives to action in the life that now is. It 
includes, also, all the forces of evil that rule in human 
nature. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and 
the pride of life are but constituent parts of it. The 
Scriptures know nothing of the triad, " the world, the 



THE SURE VICTORY OF FAITH. 171 

flesh, and the devil. " The flesh is one of the forces of the 
world, and the devil is its prince and ruler. Whatever 
alienates man from God and sets up self-indulgence in- 
stead of self-subjection to the rule of the true and the 
good, is the world, and is inimical to man. And world- 
liness, whatever its outward aspect, is always the spirit 
that sets up self as the object of its supreme regard. 

Nor is the world, as thus described, a religious chi- 
mera, a bugbear of pietists, an imaginary maelstrom in 
the sea of life, laid down on its chart by men who have 
never explored it. Neither is the world an extinct mon- 
ster, that may have existed when the apostles wrote the 
New Testament Scriptures, but has now vanished before 
the advancing light of science and religion. It never 
was more real, nor more active, nor more deceptive, nor 
more remorseless or pitiless than it is to-day. But it has 
no unchanging form. It is not a mode, but a spirit and 
a power. It is many visaged. It can wear the livery of 
heaven ; it can diffuse around itself the very atmosphere 
of paradise. Undiscerning people often denounce that 
as worldly which is only seemingly so, and applaud that 
as Christian which is only worldliness with a visor on. 

Two mistakes are here to be carefully guarded against. 
The one is that of the narrow-minded zealot who mis- 
takes the appearance of worldliness for its reality. To 
him the worldling is he who possesses, and not he whose 
heart is eaten out by the cankering desire to possess. He 
forgets that the world is not in one's possessions, but in 
setting the heart on them, and in a weak and foolish 
misuse of them. It is not in the flesh, but in the lusts 
of it; not in the eyes or in objects that are pleasing to the 



172 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

sight, but in that eating desire that works through the 
eye for self-gratification ; it is not in the means of luxu- 
rious indulgence, but in the silly vanity, the pride of life 
that flaunts the means and the indulgence as objects of 
admiration. There may be incomparably more of the 
world beneath calico and gilt jewelry, than beneath vel- 
vet and laces and diamonds. The decorated lackey 
who flaunts the livery may be a genuine worldling as 
compared with the quiet soul that sits within his man- 
sion, filled with thoughts of sweet charities and conse- 
crated purposes. 

The other mistake is that of the over-liberal, who 
believe that the world, in its traditional Christian sense, 
is now an empty word and nothing more. If it once 
denoted a dangerous reality, that reality has now ceased 
to exist. To talk of it as something real, is to indulge 
in idle cant. In their estimation the world has become 
so far humanized, if not Christianized, as to be no longer 
at enmity with God. It is a part of the creation of God, 
and as such is to be rejoiced in. They, too, like the 
zealot, err in judging only by the outward appearance. 
The world has indeed been taught to put on a less repul- 
sive attire ; its tones have been softened ; its features are 
less gross ; its deformities are veiled ; its vices are hidden 
from public gaze ; it even puts on an air of refinement and 
culture. But it is the same old enemy of the apostolic 
days, however changed in tone and outward appearance. 
So long as it shuts out the will of God from its motives, 
so long as it panders to self and self-indulgence, so long 
as it fails to make the character of Christ the ideal type 
of humanity, so long it will remain the enemy of God 
and man. 



THE SURE VICTORY OF FAITH. 173 

Now with the spirit of this world which is every- 
where around us, insinuating and seductive, every one of 
us must fight and overcome it, or it will overcome us. 
And it can be conquered by no weapons of its own kind. 
"I trample on Plato's pride," sneered Diogenes, while 
treading with his dirty sandals on Plato's purple couch. 
" Yes, " said Plato, " but with a greater pride. " No back 
fire can arrest and defeat its course. We never can over- 
come it by a bribery of one or more of its forces to join 
us in fighting against the others. We never can — 

" Compound for sins we are inclined to 
By damning those we have no mind to." 

No league with the lust of the eyes can vanquish the 
lust of the flesh. No alliance with the pride of life can 
overcome either the lust of the flesh or the lust of the 
eyes. Every principle of the world is vital with the 
spirit of every other. Not one of them but in the end 
will turn traitor, and betray us into the hands of all the 
others. Victory can come to us from only one source and 
by one method, — from Jesus Christ, who was born into 
the world to overcome it ; and from a thorough faith in 
Him as One who overcame and is now seated at the right 
hand of God. 

But let us not mistake as to what it is that is to give 
us the victory. It is not a mere assent to the dogma of 
the incarnation. Multitudes of men had mastered the 
world before Jesus was born into it. Moses and the 
prophets all triumphed over it. And it was their faith 
in God founded on such knowledge as they had of Him, 
which gave them the victory. Moses, seeing dimly and 



174 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

from afar, and believing in what he saw, fought the 
world in Egypt, and laid the foundations of a new re- 
ligion and a new civilization. The prophets, with clearer 
vision and stronger faith than were vouchsafed to Moses, 
continued the warfare, lifting religion and civilization to 
a yet higher plane. Faith in the still clearer teachings 
of Jesus as the Son of God can do for us to-day more 
than it ever did for Moses or any prophet. He who now 
masters the world will believe in Jesus as speaking by 
the authority of God, and in His teachings, as being God's 
latest and most authentic communications to man. To 
what some of these teachings are, and the connection of 
our faith in them with the victory of which we are speak- 
ing, let us for a moment turn our attention. 

1. Jesus taught the minute fatherly care of God for 
every human being. He was not, as some have affirmed, 
the first to teach God's fatherhood of our race. This had 
been plainly taught by the prophets centuries before 
Jesus was born. It was evidently a common idea in the 
time of Malachi, four hundred years before the birth of 
Jesus. Even the Eomans were accustomed to speak of 
Jupiter as father of gods and men. But Jesus, as no 
Gentile or Jew ever could, brought God home to the 
human soul as the always present and always gracious 
Father, whose infinite eye nothing is too minute to 
escape, and whose infinite pity nothing human is too 
insignificant to move. Every event of life is foreseen ; 
every want of the soul an object of His care. To every 
human being is assigned his position in life, his duties 
and his trials, the measure of his abilities and the num- 
ber of his days Infinite Power and Infinite Love,, 



THE SURE VICTORY OF FAITH. 175 

according to Jesus, are both busily active in providing 
for the wants of the human soul. 

Now, where faith in the teaching of Jesus makes 
this truth to become a practical reality, there the power 
of the world is broken. Where there is a sense of God's 
presence, there the world is vanquished. The spirit of 
the world will flee from His presence like a demon of 
darkness. He who clearly reads the will of God in each 
event and duty of life, who distinctly hears the voice of 
the Most High saying, this is the way, walk ye in it ; 
whose one prayer is, Thy will, not mine, be done, will be 
one of the sons of God, whatever his earthly estate and 
whatever his personal endowments. No earthly incident 
can detract from the dignity of his character or disturb 
the serenity of his mind. Poverty will not dishearten 
nor riches inflate ; opprobrium will not daunt nor flattery 
delude ; neglect will not sour nor applause make vain. 
Engrossed by the highest thoughts that can engage the 
mind, and filled with the purest content the soul can 
know, the illusions of the world can no more move him, 
than the noonday shadows that flit along the mountain 
side can shake its rocky strength. 

Nor is this faith which conquers, a mere affectation of 
belief, a kind of forced credulity to keep one's courage 
up amid the uncertainties of life. It knows on what it 
builds. And when physical science comes to it, and 
prates of earthly events as the product of physical laws 
with which no Deity can intermeddle, it remembers that 
no science or philosophy ever yet reached its conclusions 
that did not force on the mind the inquiries whence and 
whither ; inquiries to which the answers of Jesus were . 



176 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

explicit ; answers that give to every one who will receive 
them the victory and the rest that all men crave. 

2. Again, the teachings of Jesus are distinctively 
ethical. He did not propound a religion on which 
morality was to be grafted as one of its products, but the 
fulfilment of moral law was the one all-inclusive object 
for which He came into the world, and for which His 
religion was established. Of that object He never for an 
instant, in word or deed, lost sight. The result was that 
He gave an exhaustive exposition of moral law for all 
nations and for all time. Multitudes of men have set 
up for ethical teachers, but not one iota of moral truth 
have they added to His teachings ; not one ethical prin- 
ciple taught by Him have they invalidated. The one 
distinguishing characteristic of His religion among all 
the religions the world has yet known, is its unyielding 
regard for moral law, for moral conduct, and for moral 
character. All moral laws are embodied in it, all are 
enforced by it, and to every one who will receive it, all 
are fulfilled by it. 

Now the moral laws to which Christianity is thus 
devoted are not repealable enactments. Indeed, they are 
not enactments at all. They are simple declarations of 
what is, and eternally must be ; they are the essential 
principles of all rational existences. Their seat is in the 
eternal nature of God, and they are the constitutive prin- 
ciples of every rational creature of God. They hold 
together the universe of rational intelligences, just as the 
law of gravitation holds together the universe of matter. 
They can no more be repealed than the law of gravita- 
tion can be annihilated. Heaven and earth shall pass 



THE SURE VICTORY OF FAITH. 177 

away, but not one jot or tittle of them shall fail. And 
man can no more escape them than he can escape from 
himself. 

The moral laws of its being also bring the soul into 
direct and conscious relation to its Maker and Lawgiver. 
They are to the eye of the soul in respect to the nature of 
God what the stars are to us on a cloudless night in 
respect to the celestial spaces ; they light up for us the 
infinite depths of the divine nature, filling the soul with 
emotions that almost strike it dumb with amazement. 
They bring the soul into the very presence-chamber of 
the Almighty ; they are His articulate voice to man. No 
wonder that in the presence of these laws the conscience 
should wield a power that entitles it to be called the 
vicegerent of the Almighty. In the heart where faith in 
Jesus gives to law and conscience this rightful rule, can 
the world hold sway ? 

3. Again the religion of Jesus assures us of the pres- 
ence in the soul of a divine and indwelling Helper. 
Other religions have restricted the divine presence to par- 
ticular localities. They have made the divine favor to 
be specially procured by sacrifices in given temples and 
by pilgrimages to specific shrines. Jesus taught that true 
spiritual worship, wherever offered, is acceptable to God ; 
that the real shrine at which divine blessings are dis- 
pensed is in the heart of the worshipper. It is in the 
heart that He has established His kingdom, and it is 
there, before the eye of the soul, that He is trans- 
figured to His disciples. To them He has pledged 
Himself to be present to the end of the world, and to 
sustain to them the most intimate conceivable of rela- 

12 



178 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

tions. " I am the vine, ye are the branches ; without 
me ye can do nothing. " 

Precisely what the nature of this relation of Christ 
with His disciples may be, it is useless here to say. If 
we reject, on the one hand, the notion of a mystical union 
of persons, still more, on the other, would we repudiate 
the notion of a mere moral influence of thought. Chris- 
tianity is not a mere system of moral-religious philosophy 
that, emanating from Jesus, has contrived to survive the 
waste of centuries. Socrates started such a system, and 
all that in reality now survives of it is his name applied 
to a method of instruction. The Platonic philosophy, 
unfolded with all the aid of the highest rhetorical art, is 
to-day the study and admiration of a cultured few, but 
it never shaped the destiny of a single people or moulded 
the character of a single generation. Christianity, on 
the other hand, beginning in the humblest possible guise 
with Jesus of Nazareth, has transformed nations, has 
moulded the character of untold generations, and to-day 
has raised the foremost peoples of earth to a higher plane 
and a purer air than the race has ever known before. 

Evidently the power that has wrought all this is not 
an idle tradition. The Christian Church, through which 
the change has been wrought, is not a monument to an 
empty name, is net an association of people held together 
by ringing endless changes on the words and deeds of One 
who lived and passed away like other men, but of One 
who died and rose again, and to-day is the personal Source 
of a life-giving energy. The Christian Church, with all 
its multitudinous names and sub-divisions, is but a 
single body organized by the Holy Ghost around the one 



THE SURE VICTORY OF FAITH. 179 

glorified Christ. To be born into this Christian Church 
by a true spiritual birth is to come into direct personal 
relation to this one personal Christ as a living and a life- 
giving Person. 

The Christianity that to-day is to give victory and per- 
sonal freedom to believers in it, must be, not a philoso- 
phy, nor a theosophy, nor a creed, nor a special form of 
worship, nor a church, but a life and a power, — a life 
emanating from the divine-human Person who was its 
original source, and flowing into the hearts of men 
through that living faith which itself is victory. 

But here we do not forget that there have been eminent 
men, men of large knowledge, of high character and of 
brilliant parts, who have not avowed themselves to be 
practical believers in Jesus. But their eminence, and 
learning, and character, and brilliancy have not been 
because of their unbelief. Neither is there any evidence 
that belief might not have added to the grounds of their 
distinction. The religion of Jesus is not repressive ; 
mankind have not gone backward since receiving it. It 
is to-day the patron and nurse of all sound learning. 
Was Faraday any less eminent and skilful as a chemist 
for being a devout and earnest Christian ? Would his 
eminent successor be any less entitled to distinction had 
he been like his eminent master, an earnest believer in 
Jesus ? 

Two very noted men, whose praises are on the lips of 
nations, have lately gone to their final accounts, neither 
of whom was accounted a believer. Both were pre- 
eminently students and lovers of nature. One studied 
nature in all the thousand attitudes and processes through 



180 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

which the numberless forms of life that lie around us 
have come into being. He studied closely and minutely 
the successive steps by which the ever-lengthening and 
ever-widening procession of life has spread itself over 
the earth. He never ventured to deny that behind the 
successive steps was a life-giving agency that vitalized all 
the boundless mechanism. This has been reserved for 
the sciolists, who know so much more than the scien- 
tists. Here, as always, " Fools rush in where angels fear 
to tread." 

The other great student of nature turned all his thoughts 
to the study of man, as presented in history and in 
human society. To his eye, nature presented herself 
not as a succession of mechanical forces, but of volitional 
energies. He was no scientist, but a cool and sometimes 
cynical critic, the Montaigne of the nineteenth century. 
He neither affirmed nor denied the existence and the 
presence among men of a personal God; he was not a 
practical believer in the divine messages of Jesus. And 
he neither himself, in the best sense, mastered the world, 
nor do his writings so lift men out of themselves above 
the spirit of worldliness as to inspire them with a desire 
to become benefactors of their race. Can any one believe 
that had Darwin and Emerson been avowed and earnest 
believers in Jesus, they need have been any less eminent 
than they were, or any less useful in the labors to which 
they devoted themselves ? 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : Could each of you, 
gifted at this moment with foresight, trace the pathway 
of his life up to the point or moment of its ending, the 



THE SURE VICTORY OF FAITH. 181 

sight would doubtless fill you with emotions which 
no language can describe. To some one of you there 
would perhaps be presented only a few faint footsteps, 
leading nowhere and ending within sight of its begin- 
ning. To another it might be a path too devious for the 
eye to follow, and terminating in gloom and disappoint- 
ment. To another, a common highway where thousands 
travel, an undistinguishable crowd. To another, a 
narrow path among thorns and thistles, and through 
narrow defiles, but ending in sunshine and triumph. To 
another, it would be a lengthened pathway " o'er moor 
and fen, o'er crag and torrent," through wide vales and 
across distant hills, and ending afar off amid the golden 
light of the sinking sun. Happily, a merciful Providence 
has hidden all with a veil which you can neither lift nor 
pierce. But from behind the veil an Almighty hand is 
stretched out, if you will but take it, that shall guide 
you in safety. It shall turn your failures into successes, 
your disappointments into fulfilment of better hopes, and 
your defeats into triumphs. To every one of you there 
is also, if you will but apply to it, a secret store of 
armament for every emergency. If you will, you can, — 

" from that secret store, 
Work linked armor for your souls before 
They shall go forth to war among mankind." 

Thus armed, your victory will be sure. That you may 
be thus armed, first settle it in your minds that whatever 
your career is to be, long or short, troublous or peaceful, 
attended with the applause or with the hisses of men, it 
shall be, so far as you can understand, precisely that 



182 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

which God has marked out for you. There is an allotted 
work for each of you, and inquiry will reveal it. Ascer- 
taining it, devote yourselves to it with all the energy, 
patience, and industry of an undivided nature. The 
resources of the universe will be at your service when 
once you are at your appointed tasks. Come what may, 
the life of every one of you will be a success, if but from 
the heart there shall rise the daily prayer, " Thy will, 
not mine, be done. " The prince of this world, coming 
to you with the offer of a kingdom for your service, will 
flee from you as from one who has power to overcome 
both him and his kingdoms. And this is a victory that 
is alike possible for every one of you. Never forget that 
the reward for a right use of one talent is every whit as 
large in proportion as that for a right use of ten. :( To 
him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my 
throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with 
my Father on His Throne. " 

Let me, also, here remind you that, related to the 
Eternal Being as you are, you cannot, if you would, 
escape either His power or His presence. The laws of 
His moral nature are also equally the laws of yours. 
You are bound to His throne by bonds which can never 
be severed. With these laws you can refuse to comply, 
but the refusal will react with penalties which no tears 
can annul. Of these laws Jesus was the one expounder 
for all time. To His expositions your hearts respond as 
the stringed instrument to the touch of a master. He 
makes the articulate voice of God to speak within you, 
saying : " This do and thou shalt live. " Believe, then, 
in this Jesus as one who is able to teach, to guide, and to 



THE SUKE VICTORY OF EAITH. 183 

save you *, and you shall know what it is to be crowned 
at the last as victors in the battle of life. 

And, finally, let me remind you of the way in which 
this same Jesus will aid you in the battle. Though it 
be an inward strife in which no human helping can avail, 
it yet is a strife in which your own unaided strength will 
never suffice. No sense of obligation, no knowledge of 
law, no voice of conscience, no moral influence of truth, 
can minister that special strength without which victory 
never can be yours. The spirit of evil, the spirit of this 
world that surrounds us like an atmosphere, pervading 
society, and penetrating to the very foundations of life, 
can never be expelled from within, except through the 
presence and aid in the soul of the personal Spirit that 
helps our infirmities. Thus aided, you cannot fail. 
Trusting in your own strength, defeat will be inevitable. 
You — 

" can make your youth 
The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts 
Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb ; " 

or you can make it as a garden of the Lord, wherein, in 
due time, " a harvest of high hopes and noble enter- 
prises " will be sure to be gathered. Which of these it 
shall be is for you to decide. Deciding rightly, there 
stands for you all the never-changing promise : " Be thou 
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. " 



PEEILS OF THE PEESENT DAY. 

Save yourselves from this untoward generation. 

Acts ii. 40. 

IT certainly is from no disposition to reflect on the 
present generation as evil above all that have pre- 
ceded it, that these words have been selected as a text. 
Every generation is attended with its own dangers, against 
which every individual of it needs to be always on his 
guard. The dangers of our day differ from those of other 
times chiefly in their number and in the false guises 
under which they present themselves. They stand before 
us under the names and claims of being manifest marks 
of progress, as being the stages of advance beyond all that 
have preceded us, for which intelligent people should be 
glad and give thanks. Some of our greatest perils lie in 
these boasted advances. 

There are two primary sources and one secondary, from 
which the moral and religious dangers of all times have 
commonly arisen. The first source is in the arrest and 
decay of religious thought; the second is in the reckless 
haste and confusion always attendant on revolutions in 
religious thinking, and the third in the erratic action of 
human impulse and passion, which is sure to reveal itself 
when the restraints of religion are slackened, as they 
never fail to be in times of religious revolution. No 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 185 

one of the three ever exists in total separation from the 
others. The first never fails in due time to introduce the 
second, and the second is never unattended by the third. 
All are commonly in full force at one and the same time. 
Let me explain. 

All life, in the simplest definition of it, is movement. 
And that life is fullest and strongest which has just 
momentum enough to convert whatever obstacle it 
encounters into means for its own development ; and its 
development is always through an ever-recurring series 
of stages or types. In vegetable life, the germ that 
shoots up, buds, blossoms, and fruits, has no sooner im- 
parted the life that is in it to the seed by which that life 
is to be perpetuated, than itself falls to the earth and 
disappears. And as with the forms of vegetable life, so, 
also, with the forms of intellectual and moral and relig- 
ious life. As with philosophy, so, also, with religion. 
Throughout the changing centuries have been the ever- 
recurring changes in types of thought and modes of ac- 
tivity. The types and forms that sufficed for Abraham 
were inadequate to the times of Moses. What was full 
of meaning to Moses became barred and unprofitable to 
Isaiah, and was old and ready to vanish away with the 
Apostle Paul. The formularies framed in the early 
centuries from the writings of the apostles, vital as they 
were in every part, became, in due time, limp and 
flabby, requiring new statements, and these restatements 
requiring the modifications and remodifications made 
necessary by the changing currents of the changing cen- 
turies. The Council of Nice would have started to its 
feet in dismay and indignation to have heard the decrees 



186 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

of the Council of Trent, and the Council of Trent would 
have shouted its anathemas at the Council of our day at 
Eome that ventured to decree the infallibility of the 
Pope. Every new epoch has required new statements 
and a recasting of the phraseology, in which it will ex- 
press even the oldest and most fundamental of beliefs. 

It is strictly in line, therefore, with the experience of 
all preceding times, that the Protestant formularies of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should now be 
subject to criticism, which, in the estimation of not a 
few of the existing generation, greatly invalidate their 
authority. Some of the dogmatic teachings of these 
formularies founded on literal interpretations of Scrip- 
ture metaphors, can no longer be vindicated by any just 
principles of interpretation. Their conceptions also of the 
origin and inspiration of the Scriptures have slowly and 
silently given place to other and different views. Thus, 
from the traditions and creeds of Christendom, it is evi- 
dent that some of the meanings originally conveyed by 
them have gradually slipped away. The original mean- 
ings having vanished, the words in which the meanings 
were expressed are falling into disuse and decay. 

On the one hand, alarmed by this decay the indolent 
and unreflecting rashly infer that the life of Christianity 
itself is dying out; that, as a religion, it may not be 
divine in its authority, and so they will trouble them- 
selves no more about its teachings. On the other 
hand, emboldened by the changed meanings and waning 
authority of the creeds, and by an abandonment of the 
doctrine of the inspired authority of the Scriptures, the 
.restlessly inquisitive and self-confident are boldly push- 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 187 

ing forward a revolution in religious thought that, like all 
other revolutions, threatens a devastation and ruin which 
the movers of it can never repair. In this revolution is 
a second source of danger. Swept by it from their foot- 
ing the adventurous, as well as the evil-minded and evil- 
disposed, are rushing madly and blindly into a blank 
disbelief in all revealed religion. 

The restraints of religion thus loosened by the apathy 
of indifference on the one hand, and by the noisy preten- 
sions of scepticism on the other, there is opened a third 
source of danger in the multitudinous perversions, defi- 
ciencies, and excesses into which a world of solicitations 
to our senses is ever alluring us. 

Let us look at some of the special evils springing from 
these several sources, from which we need to strive dili- 
gently to save ourselves. 

First among these dangers is a fixed habit of doubt and 
a settled disbelief in all positive religion. Doubt, as a 
withholding of assent till the grounds for yielding it are 
clearly understood and accepted, is always a sign of 
health, both intellectual and moral. Blind assent is 
credulity, and credulity always makes an easy prey to 
error. Credulity invites imposture, which never fails to 
appear. But the habit of doubt works mischief of another 
kind ; it puts an arrest on all the natural activities of the 
soul. Doubt fights no battles, achieves no victories, 
overcomes no obstacles, bridges no chasms, builds no 
highways of thought and action across the deserts and 
bogs of life, but stands and waits till, recoiling on itself, 
it deadens every energy of the soul. Its chief peril is, 
that by an invariable law it grows, sooner or later, into 



188 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

settled distrust, and from distrust waxes into unbelief, 
and from unbelief into disbelief in everything and every- 
body but self. 

An explicit and avowed disbelief in the claims of all 
supernatural religion is not so uncommon in our day as 
it once was. And no wonder that it should be so. The 
apostles of unbelief are propagating their dogmas with 
a zeal and confidence born of something else than doubt. 
To break down our confidence in the supernatural, and 
thus to destroy that faith in God which it inspires, has 
been declared by them to be a work of benevolence to 
man. To expel the thought of God from the minds of 
men, to drive out the living Christ from the hearts of 
men, and to extinguish the hopes which Christ inspires, 
is the work of beneficence in which these apostles of a new 
gospel are avowedly engaged. It is the benevolence of 
him who, having no shelter of his own, is intent on 
destroying that of every one else ; of him who, because 
he is himself blind, insists that everybody else would be 
greatly improved if only his eyes could be put out. 

And what do the heralds of unbelief propose as 
a substitute for Christian faith ? Surely they are not in- 
sane enough to suppose that any human being can live with- 
out some kind of faith, faith in something or somebody. 
Will it be any more refining and exalting to man to be 
persuaded that when he looks into the face of nature, he 
can see in it nothing but blank matter, moved only by 
purposeless force, bearing no trace of a personal will, 
and wisdom, and love ? Will it be any more inspiring 
and invigorating to the energies and affections of men to 
listen to the voices of nature, and hear in them no artic- 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 189 

ulate tones of paternal care and sympathy, but only the 
ceaseless clangor and rattle and roar of mechanical forces ? 
Will it give us any higher type of humanity to believe 
that we live in a Godless world, and not under the eye 
of Infinite Compassion and Love ? Will faith in an im- 
personal force, rather than in an infinite Father of Spirits 
give us a man of purer affections, of nobler aspirations, 
of more genuine moral heroism, of more complete self- 
devotion to the common weal ? 

Nay, but surely no intelligent preacher of unbelief 
would rob the soul of any ethical restraints or of any 
just motive to ethical achievement. No ; but it is ethics 
alone that they propose to put in the place of reli- 
gion. And whence have they derived the ethics with 
which they propose to supplant Christianity ? Is there 
one solitary moral principle which they find to be neces- 
sary, and which themselves have discovered, to complete 
the teachings of Jesus ? Is there one of the moral precepts 
of Christianity which they have found to have worked 
mischief to mankind ? Are they not appropriating bodily 
the ethics of Christianity while repudiating the religion 
which propounded them, and which alone can give them 
efficiency ? 

Unbelief has undertaken an impossible task It 
begins by doing violence to some of the first and strong- 
est instincts of the personal being. It assures man 
that there is no archetypal Father for whom, like a 
lost child in the dark, he instinctively yearns and 
calls ; that the future is only an eternal silence which 
no sound can break ; that outside of the life that now 
is, only infinite nothingness awaits us. And with 



190 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

such teaching can any rational mind expect long to 
be content? 

A second peril, growing out of the one just dwelt upon, 
is the temptation to an unnatural divorce of religion and 
morality. In attempted counteraction of the tendency 
to doubt and unbelief, religion is too often so presented 
as to throw morality into the background as of secondary 
importance. Against this danger not a single subdivi- 
sion of the Christendom of to-day is keeping itself strictly 
on its guard ; Eomanists and Protestants alike are prone 
to fall into it. And for this there has been a common 
cause. All alike have sought to strengthen the faith of 
men in the Gospel of Christ as a divine revelation. 
Just in proportion as they have sought to revive a droop- 
ing faith, they have quickened the religious emotions. 
Beligion, even when its faith has been most vital and 
active, was never more emotional than it is to-day. And 
this is true whether the religion be that of Sacerdo- 
talism, of Liberalism, or of Evangelicalism. Sacerdotal - 
ists make the Church the ark of safety within which 
the believer is to seat himself and rejoice. Liberalists 
make the individual consciousness the Shekinah of the 
Almighty, before which each is to bow in joyous adora- 
tion; and Evangelicals, resting all on the vicariousness 
of Christ and His work, too often content themselves 
with the joy of singing the refrain: — 

" Nothing great or small 
Remains for me to do ; 
Jesus died and paid it all, 
Yes, all the debt I owe." 

Thus one of the dangers common to every form of re- 
ligion in our time is a disposition to rest in the blessed- 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 191 

ness of its hopes, rather than to bear the burden of its 
duties; to enjoy the luxury of its emotions, rather than 
to toil in the cultivation of its virtues ; to be grateful 
for the gratuitousness of its provisions, rather than to 
submit to its requirements and to become fit for its 
blessings. 

But, on the other hand, there are those who insist on 
attempting to realize all morality without the aid of 
religion ; who refuse to recognize any divine authority 
in the Christian religion and denounce the dogmas of the 
Church as immoral in their influence. And it must be 
admitted that, so far as the letter of moral law is con- 
cerned, their morality may be real and praiseworthy. 
But it is the morality o' the outer man, and not of the 
inner. It is a body without a soul. As the emotions 
of the mere religionist will vanish in worship, in song, 
and empty words of prayer, unless embodied in deeds, 
so a morality unquickened by love to the Supreme One 
as the all-loving Father, and to the Son, who is both the 
Father's Eevealer and Eeconciler, is a morality that, 
like Jonah's gourd, will wither at the first touch of the 
worm of selfishness that lies at the heart of it. A 
morality which is to abide must be rooted alike in the 
convictions of the intellect and in the affections of the 
heart. 

The world has had in it an abundance of immoral 
religions and of irreligious moralities, but that the relig- 
ion of Jesus Christ, every principle of which inculcates 
and, properly applied, begets both the soul and the body 
of morality, should be degraded into a mere instrument 
for the creation of transient emotions, is an offence to 



192 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Heaven and a crime against humanity ; and that any one, 
appropriating the ethics of Christianity should attempt 
out of these to create a morality in repudiation of the 
religion in which alone the ethics are grounded and can 
be made vital, is to be guilty of impiety and of the 
folly of expecting grain without soil, and trees without 
roots. 

" What comes from heaven to heaven by nature clings, 
And, if dissevered thence, its course is short." 

But again, thirdly, when unbelief prevails, when 
religion fails of morality, and morality affects to repudi- 
ate religion, then spring forth into activity all those 
principles of our nature which, though natural and in- 
stinctive in themselves, work endless mischief when 
unchecked by the restraints of religion. 

First among these is an inordinate coveting of large 
possessions. The desire of gain is a universal human 
instinct, — an instinct as active in the breast of the 
savage as in that of the civilized man. And properly 
controlled, it is one of the most useful of human 
instincts. It is the first moving force in the work of civ- 
ilization. To be a personal being is to desire the com- 
pletest being ; to live by the chase is to desire the amplest 
supply of implements for success in the chase ; to live in 
the midst of the appliances of civilization is to seek to 
possess as many of the best of these as may lie within 
our reach. But the impulse to acquire, like every other 
instinct, yielded to and uncontrolled, speedily waxes 
into a passion that will subordinate, if it can, every 
other to its service. Like a vast cancer on the moral 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 193 

nature, it attracts to itself and affects every ill humor 
of the soul. 

To call into exercise this instinct for gain, the world 
now presents solicitations in number and force such as it 
never offered before. It presents them at every turn in 
life, and to all classes and conditions of men. The whole 
heart of society, especially in our own land, is inflamed 
with the passion for gain ; it is the one literal maelstrom 
into which all forces, social and political, are drawn with 
a resistless power, and from which religion itself does 
not wholly escape. 

Were this a passion that, like anger, blazing out, in 
due time consumes itself, then its ravages in the indi- 
vidual and social heart might be left to the healing offices 
of time. But no, this is a passion that, once seated in 
the soul, draws and enlists in its willing and life-long 
service every energy of the personal being. It even 
invokes religion to its aid, setting religion at defiance, 
however, whenever it cannot subordinate it to its service. 
It is a passion that is never lulled into rest, feeding and 
thriving on whatever comes in its way ; and, unlike every 
other passion, becoming strongest when every other is 
cooled by the frosts of age. 

And as with the individual, so with society ; the 
passion for wealth is always cumulative. With the 
individual, every addition to the means of gratifying it, 
adds to the eagerness of desire for another; and with 
society, the great successes of the few inflame to fever 
heat the passion of the many. With the individual, death 
alone brings the passion to an end ; in society, its end is 
only in upheaval, in overthrow, in revolution and recon- 

13 



194 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

struction. History teaches us many lessons, but none 
more emphatically than that evils which spring from a 
soil made rich by the* decay of religion and of morality 
and patriotism, can be cured only by the short, sharp 
remedy of social convulsions, — convulsions that leave 
ruins upon which long after, it may be, a revived faith in 
God and His moral laws can build anew. Most articu- 
lately is this lesson read to us by the Jerusalem and 
Eome that went down at the beginning of our era, under 
the selfishness and greed which had taken the place of the 
faith and virtues that once gave them their power and 
their glory. 

Moral evils never exist singly ; they are always grega- 
rious. Inordinate love of wealth brings with it its troop 
of abundant vices. Out of the self-indulgence which 
wealth admits of, and to which it too often is made to 
minister, spring up an array of evil passions and vices 
which, like an army of locusts, eat the germs of every 
virtue of the soul. The lust of the flesh and the lust of 
the eyes are fed till, eating out the very core of being, 
the whole moral fabric, collapsing, falls a shapeless and 
hopeless ruin. 

Again, associated with the inordinate love of wealth, 
sometimes as an effect and sometimes as a cause, and 
sometimes as that passion itself under a false guise, is 
the love of display, the craving for attention and noto- 
riety, so characteristic of shallow minds and so alarm- 
ingly prevalent in our day and land. It is what the 
apostle John calls the pride of life, or more properly 
speaking, the vain-glory of life. It is the vain show in 
which empty souls so much delight to walk ; it is rejoic- 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 195 

ing in the applause of others rather than in the quiet 
consciousness of self-approval; it is a craving for the 
credit of all we are and all we have done, and, alas, not 
infrequently, for the credit of being what we really are 
not. It is one of the vices of all times, but is pre- 
eminently one of the vices of our American society. The 
spirit of democracy specially fosters it. The political 
atmosphere of a republic in which every man is made to 
believe that he is the equal of every other, offers the 
most favorable conditions for its growth. A perpetual 
bribe is offered to the meanest and most unworthy to 
push themselves forward as claimants for all the honors 
due the noblest. 

Christianity, under one aspect of it, is the great 
leveller of mankind ; it places all men, king and sub- 
ject, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, on the same 
footing before the eye of the great Searcher of Hearts. 
Under another aspect of it, Christianity is the great 
distinguisher or discriminator between men. It sets 
personal character in the clearest light, and awards to 
each what he is fittest to receive. It puffs up none, 
while by its inward enlightenment it humbles all. To 
dwell in its light is the one infallible cure for all vain- 
glory, whether of the individual or of the nation. Self- 
ignorance is the parent of pride, of presumption, and of 
vain-glory. Self-knowledge, and with it self-judgment, 
and so an unaffected humility, are the gifts of the religion 
of Christ and of His religion alone. 

The final danger to which we shall allude is, in a 
sense, the outcome of all others ; it is a disposition to be 
content with the semblance of character even when there 



196 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

is no reality of personal worth. This is one of the perils 
of all generations ; it never needed to be more guarded 
against than in our day. Against it every principle of 
the Gospel puts us on our guard. If there be one char- 
acteristic to which Christianity attaches pre-eminent im- 
portance, it is that every man at the centre of his being 
shall actually be precisely what he professes to be. 
Eeality at the very bottom of the soul is the one founda- 
tion-stone without which it will never proceed to build. 
Genuineness of character is the one requisite without 
which Jesus Christ will recognize the discipleship of no 
one. And all men hate hypocrisy in others ; all are 
indignant when imposed upon by shams of character in 
other people. 

But contentment with reputation instead of character 
is one of the commonest, as well as the most fatal, of the 
faults of our modern life. Many causes have contributed 
to its creation. Unbelief and the divorce of religion 
from morality prepare the way for it, the craving for 
wealth and the vain-glory which the possession of wealth 
often inspires, gives strength to it when once in existence. 
The publicity now given to the sacred privacies of life 
and the new function of the personal interviewer, all 
prompt to keep up appearances, to make a fair show for 
the eyes of others, whatever may be the real state of the 
inner man and of his private life. To suppose that pub- 
licity of life will insure transparency of character, or 
that to have all eyes turned on one will compel sincerity 
of heart, is to suppose what neither good sense nor 
experience warrants. The fact is that the temptation to 
put on appearances, to build up an imposing pasteboard 



PERILS OE THE PRESENT DAY. 197 

front, will be strong just in proportion to the need there 
is for appearing well in the eyes of men. No man more 
needs to watch and fight against the demon of pretence 
than he who courts reputation, or who seeks some boon 
dependent on the good-will of others. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : You have eome to 
the close of your academic training, to the duties of man- 
hood and citizenship, at a period of the world's history 
when every energy of your being is summoned into 
activity, and when you will need all the discretion and 
decision of which you are capable. You enter upon the 
active duties of life when nothing, whether of sentiment 
or of institution, is regarded as too sacred for scrutiny 
and criticism. No human opinion and no divine thought 
are now regarded as having any right to be listened to 
till they have vindicated themselves at the bar of reason. 
Truth and error now have a free field on which to unfurl 
their banners for a final conflict. To the one side or the 
other in this conflict you will find yourself irresistibly 
drawn. There can be no neutrals and there can be no 
idle spectators. 

But you need not be discouraged by the prospect of 
what is before you. Every generation must have its 
own dangers ; those are the least to be dreaded which are 
the most clearly foreseen. 

Let me beg you, then, first of all, to understand the 
time in which you live. It is a time of transition; a 
time in which the forms of things but not their sub- 
stances are changing ; when new thoughts demand recog- 
nition from the old; when Science forces itself on the 



198 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

attention of Philosophy, and when both Science and Phi- 
losophy, joining hands, insist that Eeligion shall listen 
to what they have to say. He alone is safe at such a 
time, who, with reverent spirit, seeks only to know the 
truth, standing ever ready with undivided heart to sub- 
mit himself to its control. 

Beware of a settled spirit of doubt, partly because of 
the disquiet, partly because of the moral enervation it is 
sure to breed ; but chiefly because of the moral blindness 
it never fails to inflict. The habitual doubter is like 
the owl that hoots and hunts its prey only in the dark, 
and is always blindest when the light is brightest. 
From the very necessity of your nature you will need 
some kind of faith ; consciously or unconsciously you will 
lean on some kind of support. But is there any higher 
than the Infinite God in whom you can believe, or, is 
there any foundation for your hopes surer than that which 
Jesus Christ has laid ? 

Let me remind you that the moral laws which are 
wrought into every fibre of your being will demand their 
fulfilment. They are laws which bind you at the one 
end to the eternal God, and at the other to your fellow- 
men. And they are laws the fulfilment of which, in one 
light, are morality and in another religion, — a morality 
which, without religion, is unreal, and a religion which, 
without morality, is futile. 

You now go forth in pursuit of the prizes of life. Seek 
tliose only which are worthy of pursuit, which, when 
attained, will not disappoint you. If wealth comes to 
you by legitimate means, be thankful for it, and use it 
not for the gratification of the lust of the flesh, the lust 



PERILS OF THE PRESENT DAY. 199 

of the eyes, and the pride of life, but for the good of 
mankind. Eemember, — 

" That from the body of one guilty deed 
A thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed ; " 

that, — 

" Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, 
He is a slave, the meanest we can meet." 

If reputation comes in recognition of good deeds, and 
just character, be neither ashamed of it nor unduly elated 
by it, and never forget that he who seeks it may find it 
to-day and lose it to-morrow ; that the people who may 
be ready to crown you a king while they think you can 
help them to their selfish ends, will be the first to cry 
" crucify him " if you but cross them in their wishes. 

But there is one end in life which may be pursued with 
a patience and a persistency that never need tire, with a 
self-sacrifice that need know no limit, and with a confi- 
dence that no discouragement need weaken ; and that end 
is a character founded on truth and built up in accord- 
ance with the counsels of the eternal God. This will be 
a possession as inalienable as personal identity. Good 
men and angels and God will approve it. But be assured 
there is but one principle that can crystallize all thoughts 
and all feelings and all purposes and all affections into 
the solidity and symmetry and beauty of a character 
which will abide, and that principle is an honesty of 
soul which shrinks from no light, and is never so much 
at rest as when under the eye of Him who " looketh not 
on the outward appearance, but on the heart. " 



FAITH AND SENSE. 

Fight the good fight of faith. 

1 Timothy vi. 12. 

THESE words are not to be taken in any narrow 
sense ; they are not to be interpreted as an injunction 
to make faith the sole principle of action in life, nor to 
throw all our thoughts into another and future and in- 
visible world, to the exclusion of this world ; they give 
no hint of antagonism between what has been called 
" this worldism " and " other worldism; " they enjoin us 
to give to faith, in objects which it alone can compre- 
hend, an ascendancy over the objects of sense ; they pre- 
sent a conception of life as a continual conflict between 
sense and faith. The injunction is that we take care to 
fight earnestly against the objects of sense, in behalf of 
the objects of faith. There are many objects of faith 
that have no manner of influence over our lives. It 
makes little difference with us, or with our conduct or 
character, whether we believe in the solidity or fluidity 
of the earth's centre. But there are objects of faith which 
do concern us in our moral and spiritual life, and the 
teaching of the text is, that we struggle to make those 
objects of faith real, and to accomplish in us what they 
are intended to accomplish. That product of life which 
we call character will be thus formed and influenced. 



FAITH AND SENSE. 201 

Because, you know, every man becomes like what he be- 
lieves, and the invisible power of a man's faith brings 
into his heart all the good, and takes out from it all the 
evil of that in which he trusts. If he trusts in objects 
below him, all the good in him goes out to those objects, 
and the evil in those objects is transferred to him ; so 
that, if you know distinctly what a man believes, you 
may know his character. Every man, by necessity, be- 
comes eventually what the faith of his nature is. And 
the fight is not for principles alone, but for ends of life. 

First, then, we may ask, are these objects of faith 
real ? Does faith lay hold of reality, or is it mere cre- 
dulity ? What are the invisible objects which we are 
urged to believe in ? They are traits of character, purity 
of heart, personal integrity, wholeness and wholesomeness 
of soul, the thoughts and motives which make up the 
true man. We cannot perceive these attributes by any 
of our natural senses. Do you believe in them ? If you 
do, do you know or do you not, when you attain unto 
them ? Does any man doubt if he has purity of heart ? 
Suppose it be integrity of soul ; you believe in it. Why ? 
Not because your senses grasp it, but because of intuitive 
evidences, — the evidences of faith. We are frequently 
told that sensible men believe only what their senses 
grasp. But I tell you that traits of character are all 
matters of faith, and that in our judgment of them we 
daily act on faith. 

But, again, God is believed in by faith. We are urged 
to have faith in God. There are two phases of this 
belief: first, the belief merely that God exists, and 
secondly, that He exists with personal attributes. Lack 



202 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

of the first belief rarely occurs. The real atheist is a 
monster, and not often found. All men, practically, 
believe in the existence of some Supreme Being. It 
is the existence of a personal God and of His personal 
relations to us that is sometimes denied. But to the 
soul experiencing that God is a protecting Father, an 
Answerer of prayer, is there any doubt? If peace 
of mind is asked for and received, is it a reality ? Is 
there any doubt as to that peace which passeth under- 
standing ? We are also asked to " believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, " — not to believe merely that Christ ex- 
isted, for history proves that, — but to believe and trust 
in His power to save. When a soul, burdened with a 
sense of guilt, overcome by the power of evil, and sighing 
for deliverance, finding all blank in the world without, 
and all confused within himself, cries out, " God, give 
me strength to conquer, * and the sense of spiritual com- 
fort and relief comes, is there any doubt about it ? Are 
these objects certain or uncertain, real or unreal ? Are 
we credulous or have we a rational trust ? So I might 
proceed with other objects of faith. These, we claim, are 
real, and we believe in them because they are real. 

But, secondly, " What certainty is there that we all 
may triumph in the conflict of faith and sense ? " This 
is a question that every young man will ask. I answer, 
first, that faith itself is witness to the triumph assured. 
If an object of sense gratifies me, it acquires power over 
me. The force of habit is an illustration. So, if my eye 
be opened to discern the objects of faith, then those ob- 
jects gratify my spiritual nature, my spiritual discern- 
ment, as distinguished from my natural vision. I am 



FAITH AND SEJSfSE. 203 

aware that I talk to some as vainly as if I were to speak 
to a South African Kaffir of the beauties of art. The 
natural eye cannot discern spiritual things. Spiritual 
things are spiritually discerned, and only so discerned. 
Let the spiritual capacity of the man be awakened and be 
put at work, and the soul comprehends the objects of 
faith. There is a parallel in the teaching of a child ; the 
eye of the understanding is opened. A belief in learning 
obtains mastery over the child's senses, and he progresses 
in knowledge. And so, if you give the soul a taste of 
spiritual things, it will grow in spiritual knowledge, and 
the objects of faith, once apprehended, will give faith 
the mastery over sense. 

Compare, if you will, the progress of faith with the 
progress of the senses. The eye, the ear, the hand, etc. , 
all wear out. The objects into contact with which the 
senses bring us, soon lose their power, even the most 
entrancing of them. But the principle of faith grows 
stronger with each day's experience; the slender thread 
becomes a cable, and holds, in spite of all the world- 
storms which beat on the soul. Many have known what 
faith is, and what earthly experience is ; they can testify 
how the world fades away, and how faith leads on to vic- 
tory. We strive for the objects of sense, alas ! how often 
in vain ! The farmer toils from morn till sunset, but too 
much moisture or too much drought may ruin his har- 
vest. The merchant lays his plans and is sure of rich 
returns, but his hopes vanish amid financial disaster. 
The scholar applies himself with unceasing perseverance, 
and shattered nerves, a disordered brain, a ruined diges- 
tion may be the result. Nothing earthly is absolutely 



204 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

certain; nothing that the senses can grasp is sure to 
endure. But what faith deposits in the soul abides. 
Even from the man bowed down by evil habits, not one 
earnest sigh goes up to Heaven but that it reacts upon his 
soul to nerve him and make him stronger. What you 
call character is made up of these appeals to God, these 
endeavors to do right, this trust in the objects of faith. 
Not the least cry for Divine help ever fails of its reflex 
influence and its direct answer. You say you strive 
vainly to follow Christ, but not one man or woman fails 
ultimately in realizing the effect of belief in objects of 
faith. The victory is certain. 

But that victory is not easy ; the struggle for it is 
justly called a fight. It is a desperate struggle, — many 
fail to understand how desperate, — this conflict between 
the senses and faith. It requires not only patience and 
self-denial, but often calls for sacrifice that wrings men's 
souls. Like the brave men who, in the siege at Cremona 
in the fourteenth century, when their treacherous enemy 
stole their children and marched towards them with those 
children in front of the line, yet struck down the foe 
even at the sacrifice of the children, for the sake of 
country, the devotee of faith must stop at no sacrifice in 
worldly concerns, holding in reserve not even the dear- 
est interests of life. No triumph is certain without the 
willingness thus to sacrifice. Let there be no misunder- 
standing. No annihilation, no extermination of the 
senses is demanded, no violation of the laws of nature. 
Christ nowhere interferes with natural conditions. God 
and nature are one. Christ and nature are in harmony. 
The senses are the rounds in the ladder to faith. The 



FAITH AND SENSE. 205 

man who would make of the ladder seats in which to loiter 
for earthly pleasure, is the man who sells his birthright 
for the objects of sense, who ruins his soul in the vanities 
of the world. True Christianity gives faith the ascen- 
dancy over the senses. 

In conclusion, it may be asked, what is the value of 
the victory spoken of? What shall I gain, if I make 
the principle of faith superior to the senses ? I reply, 
first, that there is a sufficient reward, if you prefer that 
term, even at the very close of life. There are times in 
the lives of all men when the essence of life is concen- 
trated into a single moment. A long lifetime of storm 
ceases, and the clouds lift for a season, and a brief gleam 
of sunshine from the Sun of Eighteousness fills the soul. 
You will recall the scene in the old Eoman prison, where 
lay a man decrepit, blinded, and bearing the marks of 
heavy suffering, the howl of fierce wild beasts, starved 
that they might be the fiercer, falling upon his ear, — a 
man who had escaped the perils of sea, and robbery and 
scourging, the man who spoke the words of the text ; you 
will recall his dictation of the closing words of his life : 
" The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a 
good fight, I have kept the faith." Was not Paul's 
triumph in that hour sufficient compensation for all that 
he had suffered? I say here and now that, compared 
with such a moment of victory at the close of life, all 
trials are as nothing. Another grander scene will come 
to mind, the loftiest scene that ever angels or men 
beheld, — that under the olive-tree in the garden by the 
walls of Jerusalem, when arose that sublimest prayer that 
ever went up to Heaven : " Father, the hour is come. 



206 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

... I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to 
do. " It is true that we may never reach these sublime 
heights, but we may approach them. 

What success do the objects of sense 'secure ? Not one 
of your worldly acquisitions can you take to the life be- 
yond. But when the closing hour comes, character is as 
inseparable from the soul as its own identity ; it is as 
abiding as the throne of God. The humblest human 
being who sends up the cry, " God, be merciful, " will 
take into his soul that which is his own forever, and of 
which nothing can rob him. I have said, then, that the 
objects of faith are real and abiding. I submit if they 
are not more to be desired than all else in comparison. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : No question can 
be more momentous for you at this hour, as you are about 
to step out into the life of the world, than that suggested 
in the theme of the afternoon : Whether you will render 
allegiance to the objects of sense, or lay hold of that life 
which discerns the objects of faith. You cannot be in- 
different to this question. If you waive it, you will yield 
unconsciously to the senses ; if you shut your eyes and 
ears to faith, you will find the whole atmosphere of 
modern life full of baits for the senses, and before you 
are aware of it you will be enslaved. It is possible for 
any one of you to make a wreck of life, to go down in 
mid-ocean an irrecoverable loss ; but it is possible also 
for you to open the eye of the soul and the ear of the heart 
to the objects of faith. He who follows the latter course, 
walks in the clear light of day. God has made you free- 
men, not slaves, and has stamped you with something of 



FAITH AND SENSE. 207 

His own character. The question is, which course will 
you choose in life ? In the months past we have together 
given our attention to study of the unchanging laws of 
being which hold every one of us. We can change them 
no more than we can change our identity. Will you 
obey those laws ? You alone must answer. Pardon me, 
if, as your teacher, I charge you, in the presence of these 
witnesses, in the presence of the All-seeing God, who 
knows your every thought, — as your friend and teacher, 
I charge you, rise above your senses ; lay hold of the 
objects of faith. Live worthily and patiently. The 
objects of faith are real. Victory is certain if you com- 
ply with the conditions. Be sure that everything of this 
world is worth naught at the close of life. The end of 
life will be disappointment unutterable, if you have not 
faith. Take hold of the things that are eternal, break 
through the control of the senses. So live that, when 
life is done, you may feel that your work is accomplished. 
God alone knows which one of you will go first. Not 
long hence some of you must leave the body. God help 
you so to live that when the end comes you may be able 
to say, • " I have fought a good fight, I have kept the 
faith, " and may there thenceforth be laid up for you a 
crown of righteousness above. 



THE LIFE WOETH LIVING. 

1 have fought a good fight. 

2 Timothy iv., part of 7th verse. 

THESE were the words of a man who was about to end 
his days at the hands of the public executioner. 
He had lived a life of incessant toil, of severest hard- 
ships, of bitterest persecution ; and yet it was with no 
repining that he looked back upon that life. Indeed, 
there is in his words an unmistakable tone of exultation. 
It was a glad and grateful retrospect that met his eye as 
he glanced backward ; he was content with the results of 
a life so ending. 

When men fight, if they are intelligent persons, they 
fight for a definite object. The ignorant herd of soldiers 
may fight merely for their stipend, merely to please their 
leaders. But the projectors of all wars have great and 
definite objects to fight for. The apostle had fought dis- 
tinctly for a purpose ; that purpose had been achieved. 
What it was, is well known to you all. From the ani- 
mating Source of that life there sprang a " stream of 
tendency " that, coming down the centuries, is to-day 
moving onward with increasing volume, with resistless 
energy, — spreading out, with its fruitful tide, over this 
whole earth. 

Exactly to imitate that life is impossible for any one 
now. But to live worthy of one's endowments, one's 



THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 209 

opportunities, is possible for all men. A fitting life is 
as possible to-day as ever. What is, then, a fitting life 
for men? What is an object for which it is worth our 
while to arm ourselves, standing on our guard and fight- 
ing to the death ? Let the answering of that question be 
the object of our brief reflection at this time. What is 
a fitting life to be lived ? 

Doubtless, first of all, it may be said, for every man 
to make the utmost possible — admissible by his endow- 
ments — of himself ; to develop himself into the largest 
possible manhood ; so to expand every power in harmony 
with every other as that the highest ideal man shall be 
attained. But every human being is compounded of a 
variety of forces, — forces which must be kept in careful 
adjustment, or disorder is inevitable; forces that fall 
into discord, if but for a moment there is lost the control 
of them which reason is designed to exercise. Thus, it 
is the simplest possible thought that man has a body, 
that he has an intellect, and that he has affections. 
This bodily organism is, on every side, at every turn in 
life, met with solicitations to call it into exercise. The 
senses are appealed to every moment of our being. 
Yielding to the senses, — senses that were intended to be 
bitted and bridled, and guided and controlled, the man 
is enslaved ; the angel that is in him yields to the beast, 
— for we are allied both to the beast and to the angel ; 
we are two-fold, and he who for a moment yields to 
the control of the senses sinks to sensuality. Or, he 
may rise above the sensuous ; he may employ his intellect 
upon the numberless objects which meet his eye what- 
ever way he turn. All the powers which constitute him 

14 



210 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

rational may be brought into play. He cannot turn his 
eyes to the heavens but they speak to him ; he cannot 
look at the earth beneath him but it calls into exercise his 
thought. The voices that are in him and around him, 
everywhere, summon him to manly exercise. The intel- 
lectual may occupy him, or, social as we are, the affec- 
tions may absorb and control all. In either case, man 
is one-sided ; he is not fully developed. Each must have 
its share. We may attempt to bring the intellect into 
the mastery by doing violence to the senses, — to the 
instincts and appetites with which each human being 
is endowed. The instincts and appetites will avenge 
themselves for the wrong. You may deny their gratifica- 
tion, and they will turn again and rend you. Or you 
may call upon the intellect, and, urging it on its service, 
you may starve the appetites and the affections, and you 
will become " an intellectual machine. " The earth has 
known many such ; they are but half-men. And then 
there are your sentimentalists, whose unhealthy affec- 
tions are fed and fostered till they sink below the human 
standard ; they are neither men nor women. 

The question then at once propounds itself : "What 
constitutes the largest expansion of this human person- 
ality ? " To let each particular force with which God 
has endowed us perform its specific office, healthfully, 
consistently, that the whole personal being may be 
rounded out into that ideal completeness which constitutes 
the real " image of God. " 

But here we are at once told that " the highest end in 
life is something else than to make the most of self. " 
It is to obtain the largest measure of enjoyment; it is, to 



THE LIFE WOBTH LIVING. 211 

use a colloquial phrase, " to get the most possible out of 
life. " Under different terms this is put before men. At 
one time it is dignified by the term " happiness ; " at an- 
other it is called " pleasure. " What is happiness ? Make 
it, if you will, the distinct object of your pursuit, and so 
certain as you do, you never will attain it. The men 
who make the pursuit of happiness the controlling object 
of life are the men who 

" Never are, but always to be blest," 

and they who stop and inquire, " Am I not now happy ? " 
find that the very instant they look within, to ascertain 
whether happiness exists, like bottled fragrance, it has 
vanished. The instant you attempt to analyze and de- 
termine if you are now happy, your happiness is gone. 
No man ever found it by asking himself, " Have I not 
now found it ? " It is always unconscious ; it is always 
the result, not of searching, but the result of attainment 
of that which is searched for. I do not forget what the 
profound German thinker said when he declared that if 
the Almighty were to meet him, holding truth in one 
hand, and " search for truth" in the other, and propose to 
him his choice, that he would select " search for truth, " 
rather then truth itself. Possibly philosophic truth is 
never attainable, and the highest happiness of man is to 
be in pursuit of it. Possibly we are so constituted that 
we are satisfied and delighted only when we are moving 
on with unimpeded energy. But the conditions of true 
happiness are his only whose whole being is so organized 
and co-ordinated in its forces, that each particular part 
is in harmonious action with every other part. The hap- 



212 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

piest being that treads this earth of God is that being 
whose whole personal nature is so ordered that uncon- 
sciously every part performs its function without observa- 
tion or without reflection ; and he who is the possessor of 
such a personal life is the man who is most truly blest of 
God, — not having sought his happiness, but unex- 
pectedly found it. 

But we shall be here reminded that it is selfishness 
still, even when self -expansion and self-development are 
the objects of pursuit; that we are thinking only of 
ourselves. We shall be reminded, in the modern jargon 
of scientific speech, that there is a constant conflict be- 
tween " egoism " and " altruism, " between " self-ism * 
and " other-ism. * Let us remember that no human being 
ever attains to the largest expansion of his nature except 
by continuously remembering his connection with the 
rest of the human race. All that now is, is the result of 
the past. The human race is a continuity ; it is a per- 
sonality ; it is one. What we have " entered into " is 
the result of untold struggles, conflicts without number, 
martyrdoms, sacrifices, slaughters, upbuilded and over- 
thrown cities. Think, if you can, of the gigantic, of the 
melancholy, but of the grand march of humanity through 
this world's history, from the impenetrable darkness of 
the past into the full noon-day of this hour ; for what we 
call our civilization, what we call our blessedness of 
opportunity, is simply the result of all the past. We 
have " entered into " it. They who preceded us, in 
apostolic language, could not be " perfect " without us. 
So of the future; all that is to come is, in the germ, in 
us. The future is here; it is in our trust. As we 



THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 213 

cannot sever ourselves from the past, so by no possibility 
of thought can any man sever himself from the years to 
come. We look back upon our progenitors, and we either 
bless or curse. Our posterity will rise up and bless or 
curse us according to our heed or unmindfulness of those 
who are to come after us. So that there can be no true 
self-expansion, no enlargement of being, and therefore, 
no real happiness for the man who forgets his relation to 
this human race of which he is a part. 

And then, furthermore, we must also bear in mind our 
relation to the generation that now is. We must fight, 
as of God, against the adverse influences with which we 
are surrounded ; they are ever with us. You may call 
it the " spirit of this world ; " name it by whatever name 
you will, it exists ; and no human being can make the 
most of himself, except as he stands on guard against the 
temptations which meet him in society, — temptations to 
obtain wealth, to achieve position, to secure power, by 
the sacrifice of what is purest and best in his nature. 
Not alone this, but human society cannot influence a man 
safely. Why, our human race is to-day what it always 
has been, — moved now by freak, now by passion ; its 
fashions are freaks ; its customs are unnatural growths. 
We are not speaking of the courtesies, the amenities of 
society, which soften and refine men, but of its allure- 
ments and corruptions, which never help any man into 
the rounding out of himself into the fulness of manhood. 
You remember the vehement protest of that clear-headed, 
strong English thinker, John Stuart Mill, when he wrote 
that book on " Liberty, " — a vehement protest against the 
influence of society, against the domination of the com- 



214 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

mon customs of men : " The multitudes of men and 
women that are warped through fear, — fear of ridicule, 
fear of sly remark, fear of unfriendly criticism ! The 
man that would have self-respect, that would attain to 
true manhood, must know the dignity of personal being, 
must dare to stand up and do right, whatever the multi- 
tude may say or do. " Because the multitude, in ninety 
cases out of a hundred, are w r rong. The majority, I may 
say, are almost always in the wrong. The right is with 
the clear-headed minority. 

But it is not alone in fighting against the adverse influ- 
ences of society. We must fight against the temptations 
to neglect society, to despise it, to stand aloof from it. 
That is especially one of the dangers of the educated man, 
who lives in his closet, who thinks with the past, who 
raises himself above what he sometimes calls " the vulgar 
herd. " How shall he protect himself ? You remember 
that the greatest of all the Greek philosophers, in his 
treatise on Ethics, sets forth with glowing language 
" the great-souled man, " — the soul lifting itself up into 
the conception of the noble, the sublime, the grand, the 
heroic. The Latins have translated it naturally into 
magnanimitas. Out of it has come our word " magna- 
nimity. " How vast the difference between the great- 
souledness — the original of that term with old Aristotle 
— and the meaning of that word to-day. Your " great- 
souled " man, gathering up his clean skirts around him, 
lest they shall be tainted by contact with the rude and 
vulgar world, moves through society with magnificent 
tread, with lofty thought, with high aims, but forgets 
his fellowmen, to help whom he and each individual 



THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 215 

being has been summoned into existence. To-day. as in 
the olden time, magnanimity is " great-souledness, " but 
great-souledness condescending to the lowest estate, pity- 
ing the pitiable, stretching out the helping hand. How 
have we learned it from that great Example for men and 
angels to gaze at, when He stooped to open blind eyes, 
to unstop deaf ears, to raise the dead, to heal the sick, 
walking forth in the earth, great-souled, but condescend- 
ing and gentle and self -forgetful. This is the indispen- 
sable condition of attaining to the largest development 
of our nature. There are parts of our nature that are 
called into being, there are sensibilities, there are the 
subtile graces, which nothing but contact with wretched 
ness can call out, nothing but pity can summon into 
exercise. The man, therefore, that everywhere goes forth 
and tries to alleviate human distress, is the man that is 
taking the most direct steps toward making the utmost 
possible of himself. Do you think that John Hampden, 
when he staked his estate, his name, all that his ances- 
try had handed down, in his determined opposition to the 
encroachments of the king, lowered himself? Do you 
think that Clarkson and Wilberforce, when they stood 
serenely before the storm of contempt which they met in 
the British Parliament, declaring that slavery was a thing 
accursed of God and should cease to be, — do you think 
that they in those acts descended ? Did they do otherwise 
than build themselves up into the largest manhood ? So 
of the human in man everywhere. 

But here again we shall be told that what you call 
" benevolence, " this doing good to others, is, after all, 
but a disguised form of selfishness. That is the modern 



216 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

statement. That is what Christian people are now told, 
— that benevolence, doing good to others, is only a dis- 
guised form of self-indulgence. The mother who tears 
the cloak from her shivering shoulders, that she may 
protect her freezing child, acts selfishly. She gratifies an 
inward instinct. The gratification of the maternal in- 
stinct, it is said, is a subtle form of selfishness. The 
young hero who springs from the deck of the ocean steamer, 
in the middle of the Atlantic, to rescue a drowning child, 
is acting selfishly. But what about the one hundred and 
one that stand clinging to the bulwarks of the vessel, 
looking over, content with their empty sighs of pity ? 
Let a whole vessel -load of passengers be scattered upon 
the waves of the sea, and another vessel-load of passen- 
gers be sailing by, will they all jump overboard to rescue 
the drowning ? Is that a disguised form of selfishness ? 
Does not all the world recognize the fact that the forget- 
ting of self is something sublime ; that it is not a dis- 
guised form of self-indulgence; that it is self-sacrifice; 
that it exalts ; that it brings into play all the subtile, 
higher forces of man, and so develops them as to round 
them out into the completest ideal of manhood ? 

But I may here be asked, " What is to control us, in 
this battle of life, in trying to make the utmost possible 
of ourselves ? What shall nerve us with energy in the 
fight? What, in common language, shall be the one 
grand motive of all our action ? What is to lie behind 
us and nerve us for the conflict ? " One says : It is what 
human society has determined to be fittest for man, for 
his highest development. But what is u human society " ? 
Simply a collection of individuals. Their opinion is no 



THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 217 

more than my own private opinion. Suppose some one 
comes to me and says : " Here, it has been voted by all 
men that self-sacrifice is nobler than self-indulgence;" 
if I, in my thought, conclude that self-indulgence is 
nobler than self-sacrifice, I can pit my opinion against 
theirs. Men are constantly doing it. But another says : 
" It is found in the conflict between different kinds of 
happiness. " On the one hand, is the happiness of self- 
indulgence. Why, men sink back into that lowest form 
of human life where they say : u I will simply surrender 
to my appetites, — the brutal, the enslaved, the bestial 
form of humanity, — where I am perpetually seeking to 
gratify these appetites of mine, vacating my manhood, 
forfeiting my birthright, blotting out the image of Him- 
self that God gave to me. " On the other hand, is the 
happiness of self-sacrifice, the blessedness of the man 
who feels that he has sacrificed himself that he may bless 
another ; like the hungry man who, coming to his dinner, 
sees the starving tramp, and hands it to him, and after- 
wards says, " I have saved a victim from death. " It 
may be said that that is a vague satisfaction; pit one 
against the other, and ninety -nine out of every hundred 
of our human race \^ill say, " Give me the present gratifi- 
cation. " You cannot balance pleasures. No one has 
ever yet succeeded in balancing them, and when our 
modern philosophers tell us about altruism and egoism, 
that they are balanced one against the other, and that so 
the human race is kept in a state of equilibrium, the 
truth is that men will sacrifice this race of ours, if left 
alone simply to their choice between self-indulgence and 
self-sacrifice. 



218 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

Some one will come forward — there are such — and 
say to you, " Friend, what you seek is not in your idea of 
manhood, in your development. It is not in benevo- 
lence ; it is simply a matter of strong, silent submission 
to law, to the mechanical laws that rule in this world. " 
They tell us that the man who surrenders himself to the 
teachings of science is intellectually honest; that he 
never asks, " What ought I to find ? " " Find out what 
is ; find out what is, " they tell us. This is the gospel 
of the day. " Find out, by your careful observation, 
what now is, and, having ascertained the law, gird your- 
selves up, with true manhood, to bow before it, asking 
no questions, parleying with no feelings, but simply ask- 
ing of the law what it demands. Law to them is like 
the sphinx's face, — moveless, — no heart behind it, 
looking out grimly over the waste sands of life ; and the 
man who acts simply from law vacates his affections, 
surrenders his will, makes himself but one of the cog- 
wheels of this universe, becomes purely a part of the 
mechanism. And there are men, types of this kind of 
manhood, stepping forth now as grand examples. What 
are they ? They certainly are not sensuous. They have 
sacrificed all self-indulgence ; their God is science ; they 
bend all their energy to find out what is ; they are men 
that have lifted themselves up above all that you could 
call low or degrading. But what are they ? 

" Faultily faultless ; icily regular ; splendidly null." 

Like statues, as unmoving and unmoved as the marble 
or the bronze statue of your market-place ; as unmoved 
ajid unmoving amid the sacrifices and sufferings of our 



THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 219 

race as the statues that grace the solitary places of the 
parks. They have not that loving, that loyal recognition 
of the wants and the needs of their fellowmen, which 
Christianity enjoins, which tells you : " Make the most 
you can of yourselves, but make it in the sacrifice of 
yourselves for the good of others. Forgetting self, you 
will find self. Benefiting others, you will attain to the 
truest dignity of your nature. " 

It is not, therefore, in the conflict of laws that a man 
is to find the grand motive-power which shall nerve 
him for life's battle. What, then, is it? I know but 
one thing. Upon all this conflict of motives, this tur- 
moil of passion, there comes the voice of One who de- 
clares, " All this is My creation. I am God, and beside 
Me there is none other. " The conscience, — that speaks 
with authority. There is no authority in law, to man, 
unless that law express a personal will ; no authority in 
your Sphinx's riddle; no authority in these phenomena 
of nature, — unless they express a personal will lying 
behind them. And when that personal will, repre- 
senting to us supreme, loving authority, commands that 
we sacrifice ourselves for the good of man, and for the 
honor of God, then, in obeying, do we recognize a power 
that transforms us, lifts us up, puts a new spirit into our 
souls, enables us to look upon life as God intended it 
to be viewed, — a life of conflict, a life of struggle, a 
life ending in triumph. We recognize one God, who 
ever lives and loves; one God, one law, one element, 
one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation 
moves. To that God, to that creation, to that law, let 
us all be now and ever loyal — submitting, worship- 



220 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

ping, toiling, loving, living on, assured of a triumphant 
ending. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : I need not con- 
tinue these words farther than to ask you to remember 
and apply to yourselves the principles we have now dis- 
cussed. The substructions of your personal characters 
are already laid; the superstructure to be built upon 
them must be strictly in accordance with your own will 
and working. What shall it be ? You can easily gather 
up the loose materials that the world piles around you, 
and build a kind of character. Or, you can build from 
materials gathered only by your own patient quarrying ; 
you can build with materials that will survive those fiery 
tests to which everything human must at times be sub- 
jected. Things that live are only of to-day ; to-morrow 
is yet to be born. The past is ever dead and dying. 
Learn, first of all, then, to " make stepping stones of your 
dead selves to higher things. " Let nothing past suffice ; 
ever onward, and ever upward! In life you will meet 
many and disguised temptations. They will come to 
you gilded, will thrust themselves upon you at every 
turn in life. It will be easy for you to be betrayed ; 
nothing but watchfulness will keep you, — nothing but 
an undying determination to stand ever on your guard, 
ready for a fierce conflict for the right. God give you 
strength to fight always for truth ; to fight always for the 
right, for self-respect, for God, for universal righteous- 
ness. And on the earnestness with which you fight, 
though men misunderstand and forget, will depend the 
end. You will either be vanquished, or you will be 



THE LIFE WOKTH LIVING. 221 

victors. You must take your choice. You can be vic- 
tors, every man of you, no matter what your surround- 
ings, what your temptations, what your perils. It is 
now within your reach to make of yourselves true men ; 
you have it in your power to surrender all. Couch, like 
Issachar, under the burdens of life, content with the 
things that are pleasant, and the world will trample on 
you with its rude hoofs, and shovel you into your graves, 
forgotten. But, remembering the truths with which you 
have here been growingly familiar, remembering the God 
who hath said to you, " Be faithful, * the Christ who has 
taught you how to live, every one of you may achieve a 
life at the end of which you can lie down in peace, saying, 
" I have finished my course, and God be thanked that I 
have lived. " Young gentlemen, I now and here charge 
you, as American citizens, as men who are to receive from 
your predecessors great trusts, as men who are enjoined 
of God to hand those trusts over to your successors, I 
now charge you never to bribe or be bribed to the wrong, 
never to surrender your manhood, nor your self-respect, 
to any temptation. And so certain as you observe this 
injunction, not an earnest purpose of yours for the right 
shall fail, not a deed faithfully done but shall leave its 
deposit in your soul, building up in the end a character 
that will please God, and will be to yourselves an eternal 
source of satisfaction. May your days be many; but 
whether they be many or few, be true, be faithful, and 
in the end, He who rules over all will crown you with 
that crown of righteousness with which the Apostle, 
whose words you have heard spoken to-day, was assured 
that his life should be crowned at the last. 



TKUE WORSHIP. 

Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only 

shalt thou serve. 

Luke iv. 8. 

EVEEY man has some one object of supreme regard, 
— an object around which the thoughts of his life 
revolve. Other subordinate ideas accompany it as con- 
tributive, but not as central ideas. Great revolutions 
occur sometimes in individual experiences, and there is 
a change in the supreme object; tributary objects some- 
times become supreme over all. A devotion to inferior 
ends is sometimes called worship. A man may worship 
art, nature, ideas, or beauty, but our text calls attention 
to the word worship, not in an allowable or metaphorical 
sense, but in the highest sense, as devotion to God. 

There are many elements in what we call worship. 
The lowest is admiration ; and from admiration it may 
ascend to the highest adoration, the true worshp of God. 
True worship is an awakening to highest praise and de- 
vout adoration. We are called on in our text for true 
worship. True worship is a surrender of our entire being 
to God ; it is not simply to praise Him, but to serve Him 
with body and spirit. True worship is a spontaneous 
expression of intelligence. The higher the intelligence, 
the more profound is the worship. It is ignorance that 
is bold. Ignorance is bold, irreverent, and reckless, be- 



TRUE WORSHIP. 223 

cause it does not know what worship to God is. The 
educated man who has true knowledge, sees and hears, and 
comprehending, bows in reverent worship. Intelligence 
and worship come from those whose knowledge and expe- 
rience is widest. 

I choose the words of the text because they were quoted 
by Christ, and have been reiterated down the ages to the 
present time. In reading the Psalms, you will notice 
that the writers declare that all nature recognizes and 
praises God. We bow before these gifts of life which 
surround us, and go into raptures over the beauties of the 
sky, the earth, and the sea ; but we do not bow before them 
for themselves. Everything in nature embodies an idea ; 
men are recognizing these ideas. These things are not 
simply to make life pleasant ; they speak to us, and we 
gather from them our sciences. Sum these sciences into 
the one comprehensive thought that all nature reveals 
and praises God, and we instinctively cry out with the 
Psalmist, " Worship the Lord thy God. " This world is 
ruled by silent, irresistible, multifarious, multitudinous 
forces, all working out a unity of ends. They bring out 
order from chaos, all working by inflexible laws. In 
this beautiful June weather the very skies speak out to 
us, exhorting us to bow down before God. 

Every nation reflects in character the Deity it worships, 
and every nation has its Deity. You study the history 
of a people; you know the Deity they worship. You 
analyze it, and you know their character. Analyze 
their character, and you know their Deity. The Puri- 
tan God made deep and hard lines on the character of the 
English people which no revolution has erased or can 



224 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

efface. So every nation must have a character in accord- 
ance with the character of its Deity. The inner thought 
of man will respond to the thought that " righteous and 
just are thy judgments, God. " Looking over the expe- 
riences of the past and present, and looking into the 
future, we know that God rules righteously. As His 
judgments go forth at the last, our hearts will respond 
that they are just and true. 

There are two distinct ways of worshipping God. One 
is by the observance of religious rites in public worship. 
I know of no symptom of our time that should awaken 
profounder alarm than that so large a proportion of the 
living people fail to engage in public worship, and that 
there is such a multitude of educated men who never 
appear or participate in assemblies singing praises and 
offering worship to God. Worship of God is not a peti- 
tion. A profane oath is a petition, but is not worship. 
All over our land are educated men who all their lives 
have been gathering God's gifts, and who never deign to 
meet God's people. Is there not something for them in 
the service which raises a man above his sordid desires, 
influences him to clothe himself in clean linen, and to 
divest himself of all that degrades and soils, and to seek 
enlightenment from communion with Him who filled 
the world with beauty and joy? What man has not 
been, by the worship of God, lifted and strengthened in 
heart to bear his burdens and fight the battles of faith, 
righteousness, and truth. Do the men who bargain their 
consciences for high political position bow down and 
worship God ? When such people talk the cant of " wor- 
shipping nature," they know in their hearts they are not 



TRUE WORSHIP. 225 

honest Christians, and are not such men as will go to God 
and say, " Thou hast called us ; let us be Thy servants. " 
Let us rather speak the word in the regular assembly, 
singing hymns of praise and adoration, and striking hands 
for righteousness and truth. This church service is 
something which fits men for the outer and public life ; 
observing it, they catch glimpses of their hidden motives, 
of their nearness to God, of inevitable rewards and retri- 
butions which fill them with awe, and the fear to com- 
mit unrighteous deeds. He who presents his brief at 
the bar, he who ministers to the sick, he who is God's 
minister, he who bargains, he who embarks in great 
enterprises and commerce, are led to say, not with cant 
and hypocrisy, " God guide me and help me to fulfil the 
obligations imposed on me in life." This is true ser- 
vice, a reverent regard for God and conscience continued 
through all the ramifications of life, m the domestic 
circle, in business, alone with God, and among men in 
His public worship. 

[Dr. Eobinson then addressed the graduating class 
substantially as follows : — ] 

The stage of life which you enter upon stands enveloped 
in profound and inscrutable mystery. The future, which 
has no ending, is before you; if you should take the 
wings of thought and try to fly to the uttermost limits 
of space, your mind would tire, and seek a resting-place. 
But in boundless space and through all time God is, 
always has been, and always will be. His will is 
written in laws on your minds and hearts, and speaks to 
you and holds you. 

15 



226 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

As you enter upon a new stage of life, numberless 
prizes are set before you, never so great, so tempting, or 
so easily reached as to-day. You enter at a time when 
all the accumulated opportunities and treasures of the 
past are poured forth in innumerable and enticing forms. 
Satan invites you to fall down and worship him, and 
promises that all the kingdoms of the world shall be 
yours. You will be tempted, and I bid you remember 
what Jesus replied : " Get thee hence, Satan, for it is 
written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him 
only shalt thou serve. " Whatever comes to you in your 
after life, there will always be a compensation, for noth- 
ing stands absolutely by itself. When you secure the 
prizes that men sacrifice themselves for, you will be 
oppressed with an unspeakable sense of their emptiness. 
There is one Being who can fill this void, — He who 
created the boundless universe and its infinite resources, 
to whom I bid you bow the knee, not in servile service, 
but as a son of God. As a true son of God, He offers 
you the fellowship of His Son, who will be to you as an 
Elder Brother in fighting the fight of faith. When forty 
or fifty years have passed, and you come to the solemn 
festivals of this college, only those who have been faith- 
ful to God in truth and righteousness, will be found to 
have truly prospered. Whatever may be your experiences 
in life, even if you fail, as men count it, be true to God 
and there can be no real failure. May the Infinite Being 
watch over you and help you to make His life yours. 



NATUKE AND EEVELATIOK 

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, 

having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell 

on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, 

and people, saying with a loud voice, " Fear God and give 

glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come ; and 

worship Him that made heaven and earth, and the sea and 

the fountains of waters." 

Revelations xiv. 6, 7. 

THE association of the works and the word of God in 
the Scripture is full of significance. It reminds 
us that what we distinguish as nature and revelation are 
not only from one and the same source, but exist for the 
same ends. He who created heaven and earth made them 
for a purpose.- That same purpose is taken up and 
carried forward in the words spoken by the prophets 
and apostles, as well as by the works of nature. The 
methods by which these ends are sought differ. What 
we call nature works by what we in our ignorance call 
forces. The revelation of the Word of God proceeds by 
methods different from those of nature, but both reach 
their ends definitely and intelligently, and harmonize 
one with the other. What God purposes to accomplish 
by His works, He accomplishes also by His words, but 
by His works more slowly. There is not a sound but 



228 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

has a voice in it, a thought. That thought is plainly to 
be read by him who desires to know it. The prophets, 
by a single sentence, could predict the doom of a city or 
a nation. Nature moved slowly through centuries in 
accomplishing what the prophets in a sentence had 
uttered. But in the end nature and revelation are one. 

This is eminently true of the Gospels. They are ever- 
lasting Gospels, not of a day nor of an hour, but for 
all time and all races. They interpret the word of God. 
They are not an unexpected appendix to complete a sys- 
tem, but a consummation of it. What nature does in 
a blind way, the Gospel of Christ does as the consumma- 
tion of the purpose for which the universe exists. 

Attempts have frequently been made, however, to set 
nature and revelation in antagonism ; not only to divorce 
them, but to place one over against the other to supplant 
it. Let us glance at some of these attempts, confining 
ourselves to the last two and a half centuries. Two and 
a half centuries ago the attempt was made to supplant 
revelation by human reason, which was said to be enough 
for all man's necessities. Lord Herbert's attempt was 
the beginning of English deism, and ultimately of Ger- 
man rationalism. Whatever he intended, he simply put 
reason in place of revelation. But when this system 
had done its utmost, it found itself supplementing the 
very work that revelation was doing. 

Eeason had been ostracized by the believers in revela- 
tion as antagonistic to it, and overthrowing it. In the 
long period of English literature we find numerous inti- 
mations of the opposition of the two. We know what 
the results were. The reaction came. Eeason is to show 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 229 

the reasonableness of the Scriptures, the reasonableness of 
Christianity ; and to-day the two are in perfect harmony. 

Subsequently there were other attempts of the same 
kind. It was declared that the voices of nature and of 
God were not in harmony, that one contradicted the 
other; and the different sciences in succession were ap- 
pealed to. The first was astronomy. In the heavens 
men declared that they found a testimony to contradict 
the teachings of revelation. But in the course of time 
astronomy is found one of the most dutiful of the hand- 
maidens of religion. Geology was no sooner born than it 
was brought to this service. Moses, it was affirmed, was 
mistaken. In course of time, however, though errors and 
discrepancies were found in detail, geology and revelation 
were seen to harmonize. So He who told of the creation 
of the world knew more of it than was seen on its surface. 
Passing to other sciences, there cannot be found one whose 
teachings are in opposition to revelation. 

In physiology we were told that human consciousness 
is only a state of the brain, that feeling is only a thrill 
of the nerves. All that belongs to the human spirit was 
explained by the human organism. God was no longer 
discoverable in the human frame ; there was nothing in 
the heavens ; the heavens were empty ; the earth was 
barren. It w T as sought to prove that all life is not 
created, but came out of the forces of nature. But the 
answer through the lengthening line of scientific inquiry 
is, that no explanation can be given of this universe 
except by that of a Creator who created the germs of all 
things. The most pronounced evolutionist admits that 
a primal cause is a necessary presupposition. The sur- 



230 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

prise is that germs containing within them all that we 
see in the full flavoring and fruitage of humanity come 
from an unknown and undiscoverable source. Science 
quits her search for spontaneous generation, and declares 
that somewhere, somehow, there is a first cause. Such 
have been the inquiries and such the results. We come 
back to the fact that whatever science teaches, revelation 
takes up and interprets. 

What does science teach ? That the laws of God are as 
unchangeable as God Himself; that in these laws there 
is a purpose — a will ; and Christianity comes in as an 
interpreter and works in harmony with it. Does nature 
tell us in mumbling utterance that as we sow, so shall 
we reap ? But it may take us long years to understand 
the teaching. God's word tells it to us in one sentence. 
If we are guilty of a violation of our physical constitu- 
tion, we cannot avoid the penalties of nature. Christian- 
ity tells us exactly the same truth. Nature tells us in a 
faint voice how to escape in some measure the inevitable 
penalty. Christianity tells us that he who sins must 
die ; but in Christianity is found the hope of salvation 
and recovery through belief in Jesus Christ. 

Attempts have been made to discredit this truth by 
some of those who are alien to the Gospel of Christ. 
Unfortunately, there have arisen processes of thought 
and methods of interpretation by which the friends of 
Christianity take some foremost portion of its doctrine 
and dislocate and distort it. He who overstates a truth 
understates an error. Nothing is more dangerous than 
perverted truth. If you lift some facts of Christianity 
into undue prominence, you are guilty of error. The two 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 231 

most important elements of Christianity are faith and 
love. Faith is the most effective constructive principle 
of the Christian religion ; for every man becomes uncon- 
sciously like what he implicitly believes in and seeks, 
by a law as inevitable as that of gravitation, Christian- 
ity adopts this principle, and every man is saved by 
faith. No truth is more self-evident, none more easy of 
vindication. Christianity proposes the faith in One who 
made His appearance on earth both as the Son of Man 
and the Son of God. He died for the race ; but He died 
to save those who trust in Him. What is that trust ? 
Not a process of the will by which you say, w I accept 
Him. " It is not that alone ; that is a mere work ; some- 
thing done. Alas ! how frequently is that the only 
acceptance of Christ. 

There are two causes to prevent any further and truer 
belief. The first is an earnest attempt to master the re- 
sults of Christian teaching. Modern revelation seeks a 
quick return, as they say in trade. I make the state- 
ment, I believe in Him, and all is done. This is a 
perversion, — not faith, but a mistaken trust. 

Another and corresponding element of Christianity is 
the principle of love % According to the teachings of 
God's word, love is the fulfilling of all law. Why? 
Because what occupies my thoughts and fills my atten- 
tion moulds me. Love is not separable from faith. 
Love, they tell us, is the source of life, the great founda- 
tion of the universe. The question is put, will you not 
respond to Christ's love? Will you not love Him? 
And the answer immediately is, " Oh, yes ; I love Him 
for all He is, for all He has done, for His gifts and 



232 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

benefits. " How utterly unlike that stern declaration, 
" I love the laws of God !" We are told that Christ and 
Christianity were perverted in the past by too great 
emphasis on law and on justice. John Calvin, they tell 
us, was a great perverter of God's truth. He insisted 
that justice ruled the world ; that Christ came to fulfil 
all righteousness. That, they tell us, produced Puritan- 
ism, — a stern and unlovely belief; and to-day, they say, 
is a day of unbounded rejoicing in love, which the greatest 
teacher of the nineteenth century has rescued and restored 
to its proper place. 

But what did Jesus Christ tell us ? " Till heaven and 
earth shall pass #way, not one jot or tittle of the law 
shall be abated ; " " If you love me keep my command- 
ments. " Eead the Gospel of Christ, and see if it is the 
gospel of gushing emotion ! See if it is not the doctrine 
of stern practical life. We are told it is a gospel of love 
and not of law and fear. What are the fruits of this 
teaching ? Go back half a century ; when a man was 
known to be a Christian man, his word was to be trusted. 
A defaulter was so rare in those days that his name was 
used to designate the crime. In twenty -five years what 
do we see ? Church members an,d Sunday-school super- 
intendents defaulters, and the name of a Christian no 
guarantee of honesty. These are the fruits. Whence 
come they ? This suave gospel which forgets that the 
old world was built on law is the cause. We are told 
that Christianity is the gospel of forgiveness. To-day 
it is considered ill-bred to use the word hell. It is 
abolished: law has gone by. All this is the outgrowth 
of that system which partially denies and partly per- 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 233 

verts our holy religion. For myself, I would a thou- 
sand times rather have the old Puritanism, with all its 
crabbedness and harshness, than this sentimentalism, this 
soft-flowing " quick return " religion, making it so easy 
to find the way into the kingdom of God, and as easy 
to find the way out of it. 

Let us understand, however, that there is no truth 
greater or more precious than the truth which teaches 
that all men are saved by belief in Jesus Christ. God 
forbid that we say a word against love. But true love, 
Christian love, is seen in the fruits of the spirit ; it is 
the upbuilder of character. 

If what I say be true, then the declaration with which 
I opened is not untrue. The Gospel of Christ aims at 
the same thing as the creation of God ; and they are not 
contradictory. Let us, therefore, understand that all 
divine processes are but one unchanging aim of God to 
teach men that God cares for us ; that He works by un- 
changing laws, and in His work He changes not one of 
those laws. It is not more true that if physical laws 
cease, confusion and chaos will come, than that if we 
cease to regard the laws of God, truth, justice, and mercy, 
moral chaos will follow. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: You have now 
been associated together some four years in diligent study 
of the works of God. They have presented themselves 
to you in varied forms ; in them all you have found 
laws. You have studied language, and found there laws 
immutable ; you have studied the processes of thought, 
and discovered the laws of thought. You have turned 



234 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

your attention to the heavens and found laws. Mathe- 
matics have declared to you their immutable laws. You 
have studied the human organism, and there you find 
laws implacable. You have found in all and every- 
where, proclaimed as by a voice eternal, that God is 
in all things. There is no escape from His laws, no 
evasion, no fleeing the penalty of their violation. 

You are going into life, not one of you with any 
conception of the path you are to walk. Let your sole 
fear be a holy, reverent fear of God, who only requires 
you to take that step in the space which is open to you. 
Take it serenely, manfully, confidently. Eemember one 
thing amid all your searchings, inquiries, aspirations, — 
everything in the world worth having is found in Jesus 
Christ. To Him commit your hearts, so that, as you 
fall out of the ranks, they will say of you : He lived 
faithful to His trust. May God guide you so to live. 



SEEVING ONE'S GENEEATIOK 

For David, after lie had served his own generation, by 
the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers. 

Acts xiii. 36. 

THIS was the epitaph of one of the most distin- 
guished men of the earth, of one who had served 
his generation according to the will of God. David was 
one of the extremely few men in the world's history 
who have not only marked their character upon their 
times, but have moulded every generation following 
them. Eeared as a shepherd, he yet organized; and 
virtually founded, the most distinguished kingdom our 
world has ever known. He also uttered words, the most 
ennobling, expressive of the loftiest aspirations that have 
ever moved the human soul. 

Service to God and service to mankind may be separated 
in thought, but not in fact. To serve one's generation is 
to serve God, and to serve God is to serve one's genera- 
tion. True religion and true philanthropy are never sepa- 
rated. It is proper, therefore, for us to set before our- 
selves the duty of serving our generation. 

And, first, what does this service consist in ? It does 
not consist in yielding to the whims of the generation ; 
it does not consist in floating passively on the current 
of our time, nor in flattering our generation into the 



236 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

furtherance of our own plans, for this is serving ourselves, 
not our generation ; neither does it consist in flattering 
our generation for the sake of applause. Popularity 
is easily attainable when one ministers to the wishes of 
people. He who simply, like a mirror, reflects his time, 
is the one whom people will applaud and follow. Con- 
trast the careers of John Wilkes and Edmund Burke, — 
the former, the wily demagogue, with all London at his 
heels, Middlesex pushing him into Parliament, whence he 
had been rejected. Who knows him to-day ? Burke, on 
the other hand, who, when he saw England drifting from 
her moorings lifted a loud voice of warning, has left a 
storehouse of thought from which men have been drawing 
treasures ever since. One was the most popular man of 
his time ; the other was one of the most philosophical 
and far-sighted of men among the generations of England. 
Compare the contemporaries, Cowley and Milton, — the 
one popular, but a writer of puerile thoughts, a flatterer ; 
the other selling his masterpiece for four pounds. But, 
in the language of Pope, who now reads Cowley ? Who 
that reads Milton does not feel that he is in communion 
with the noblest of thoughts fitted to inspire men of all 
time ? Neither Wilkes nor Cowley served their genera- 
tion, nor did they serve God intelligently. Service to 
one's generation does not consist in defiance, not in 
defying the tendencies of the generation, like the fanatics 
of the second century, who defied martyrdom by pulling 
down the bulletined decrees of the government. Thirty 
years ago two sets of men attacked the American Eepub- 
lic from opposite sides. Men on one side denounced the 
national Constitution as a compact with hell, eager to 



SERVING ONE'S GENERATION. 237 

tear it into fragments, because it defended what they 
regarded as a most accursed institution. On the other 
side, it was assailed by men who would overthrow the 
American Eepublic because it did not defend and uphold 
this same institution; and God, in His all-wise Provi- 
dence, by floods of blood, swept away the cause of con- 
tention, bringing unspeakable benedictions upon the race. 
These men did not intelligently serve their own genera- 
tion. God overruled their madness. So also must be 
denounced that sort of wealth-getting in our day which 
throws markets into panic, wrecks railroads, thrusts 
wasteful nostrums upon the public, and falsely seeks to 
benefit posterity. People who do such things serve not 
their generation, but themselves. The humble baker 
who had his tomb outside of the walls of Eome covered 
with inscriptions of the implements of his trade, more 
worthily perpetuated his memory than these. True ser- 
vice to one's generation requires both insight and fore- 
sight, — insight to distinguish between eternal principles 
of truth and error, grasping the principles of right with 
a firm, intellectual comprehension, and then urging the 
generation to accept them ; foresight to see, and prepare 
for, the future from afar. 

Secondly, Why should we serve humbly and honestly 
our generation ? 

An eternal purpose runs through the lengthening cen- 
turies, working through each generation its part toward 
the great consummation. From different points of view 
men call this fate, or, at one time, eternal decrees, and, 
at another time, overruling Providence. But name it 
what you will, it is that which shapes the eternal whole 



238 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

throughout the generations. Many a generation has been 
false and recreant to its trust, but there is no failure of 
God's purposes on the earth. There is an eternal will 
co-ordinating, shaping those purposes. Will you not be 
one of the workers ? The generation that will not serve 
its appointed end, like the Jews in the wilderness, shall 
be swept from the face of the earth. Like the polyps 
building under the sea, each generation prepares the way 
for the one that is to come after it. 

Every generation is composed of an indefinite number 
of individual units, each individual touching others at 
innumerable points, through action and interaction, 
through giving and receiving. So every man, in order to 
do his appointed work, must give. He who seeks to 
receive and never give, is like the heedless farmer who 
never gives back to the soil what he takes from it. 
Universal nature teaches us a universal and mutual inter- 
dependence. The tree of the forest, by its secret alchemy, 
extracts nutriment from the soil, imbibes nourishment 
through the pores of its leaves from the air ; but i t gives 
back in new forms to the atmosphere what it has absorbed, 
and through its falling leaves, its decaying branches, and 
finally by its dead trunk, gives back again what it has 
extracted from the earth. So every individual should 
return again to society what he has been gathering 
from it. 

Only through service to his generation, can each indi- 
vidual attain to the highest possible development of him- 
self. As the athlete gets muscle and vigor through 
struggle with what taxes his strength, so the individual 
must develop mind, heart, moral energies, through ser- 



SERVING ONE'S GENERATION. 239 

vice to his fellowrnen, combating prejudice, fighting with 
evil, defending the good. The finest graces of character, 
as well as the noblest virtues of soul, are obtainable only 
through joining with all one's energy in the conflicts of 
his time in defence and in furtherance of whatever is 
noble and heroic and beneficent to mankind. No indi- 
vidual, therefore, is ever rounded out into a complete 
and symmetrical manhood unless he fulfils his obligations 
to his generation. The finer graces come only from attri- 
tion, daily contact with others. The noblest impulses 
of the soul are developed by helping others ; but the best 
philanthropist is he who says least. 

In what specific ways can we serve the generation that 
now is — we who live in this State of Ehode Island, and 
in this city of Providence 1 What are some of our 
dangers ? 

Let us observe some of the worst and most dangerous 
tendencies of our time. There is an all-absorbing pas- 
sion for gain. In a young man's choice of a profession, 
the question is asked, " What are the profits of it ? " 
Parents ask the question, " Is it an avenue of wealth ? " 
The whole heart of modern society is inflamed with this 
passion ; every vein of social organism is throbbing with 
the pulse of this fever. Educated men, above all, should 
show that there is something higher, nobler, worthier to 
be sought than mere wealth. Let it be understood that 
the first object in life is not to acquire wealth, but to 
help men. It belongs to the educated man to uplift his 
fellowmen, to be a promoter of character ; for the helping 
of mankind is of more consequence than the helping of 
one's self. 



240 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

There is a general disposition on the part of Ameri- 
can citizens to surrender the control of their political 
convictions to the dictation of unscrupulous partisans, 
the direction and control of votes to what are called 
rings and political machines. Political parties are 
necessarily differently marked ; they exist and will exist, 
and it is well that they should ; but every self-respecting 
and thinking man must serve his generation by standing 
for the right, by contending with vehemence for honesty, 
for honor, for political integrity. Every man should say, 
" I will exercise my independence of thought, and woe 
to the leader who attempts to control my action and my 
vote ! Woe to the man who shall seek to bridle and curb 
my power of choosing between right and wrong!" We 
are required in our day, by all that is highest in patriot- 
ism, to say, " Whereas I have been intrusted with the 
privilege of casting a vote, I will cast it for honor, truth, 
and justice, come what may, whether it results in the 
disintegration of a political party or not. " 

There is another danger, and I feel an extreme delicacy 
in touching upon it, but it should be mentioned. We 
have a law here in Ehode Island prohibiting the sale of 
intoxicating liquors. At the beginning of the operation 
of the law there was an immediate, a marked, a wide- 
spread diminution of crime. The law for the time was 
obeyed. There were indications of purity ; there were in- 
dications of social order. Every one was rejoiced. There 
was not, however, a cessation of the private and personal 
consumption of articles which the law had prohibited. 
For the supply of this consumption there were importa- 
tions which speedily became known. Liquors were used 



SERVING ONE'S GENERATION. 241 

by people of prominence in society and on public occa- 
sions. The law had not the support of leading citizens. 
Soon intoxicating liquors were openly exposed for sale. 
Our city and our State have become disgraced by the 
public and notorious violators of established law, un- 
speakably disgraced with drunken persons reeling on our 
streets. How can the criminal classes be expected to 
keep the law, when the wealthy and the prominent do 
not ? It is said the law cannot be enforced. Why can't 
it ? Every person, every household, every club (not pri- 
vate clubs alone, but every club) should say, " No liquor 
to be used here. " The common argument, " Why, it 
has always been sold ! " was used long ago. If meat 
cause my brother to offend, then I will eat no meat \ if 
wine cause my brother to stumble, then I will drink no 
wine. Heart-rending appeals come up from women and 
children in pitiful distress ; and I beseech every man 
and every woman, every lover of right, purity, and order 
to serve their generation by self-denial, by personal ab- 
stinence, by themselves respecting the law, giving sup- 
port to those whose duty it is to enforce it. 

[President Eobinson now gave his final words of counsel 
to the gentlemen of the graduating class, who arose as he 
addressed them. He told them every generation had a 
right to look to educated men for guidance, for intelli- 
gent, helpful service. The discipline and the education 
which they had received, helped them above the average 
man to render this help to the generation of which they 
were a part. He informed them it remained to be seen 
when they should come back in the recurring years 

16 



242 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

whether they had been of good service in this world. 
There would be marks upon them plainly discernible, 
showing whether they had served their generation accord- 
ing to God's purpose. 

He next spoke of the perils of the generation. It is 
an age of transition, when the old things are passing 
away. The natural science now studied is not the science 
our fathers studied. Ours is a new science. Not only is 
there a new science, but a new theology. After speak- 
ing of this progress in modern thought and in all depart- 
ments of life, the President touched upon the opportunities 
of the present generation, telling the members of the class 
that they were now parting at the division of the ways. 
As on the dividing summit of the Eocky Mountains, two 
drops of water falling near each other separate, one speed- 
ing onward to the Atlantic and the other to the Pacific 
shores, so they were at the parting of ways, and it de- 
pended upon their own decisions under Divine guidance 
what they should make of their lives. He entreated them 
to keep honor, to keep integrity, to be true to God, to 
be true to Jesus Christ, who lived and died for them, 
and who pledged them to be faithful to the end. He 
implored that the Father would keep them and crown 
them with the blessing of God and with the approval of 
all good men.] 



GOD GLOEIFIED IN CHARACTER 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see 

your good works, and glorify your Father which is in 

heaven. 

Matthew v. 16. 

EVEEY human intelligence sheds some light in the 
world. It may be a light that lights only a house- 
hold, possibly a hamlet; it may be a light that illu- 
minates nations, and for centuries. The degree and kind 
of the light depends partly on the degree of intelligence, 
partly on the ends towards which the intelligence act's. 
The deeds which are done reveal distinctly the glory or 
the shame of the ends for which they are done. It is 
after the style of Oriental imagery that the text speaks 
of deeds as casting light. Modern thought goes behind 
this, and fixes its attention on the source of deeds, — 
character. It is not so much the doing of a man, but 
the man himself that modern thought takes cognizance 
of ; and character shows either the glory or shame of the 
sources whence it is derived. The text sets before you 
the connection between human character and divine 
glory. I am aware that " the glory of God, " — a phrase 
so often carelessly dropped, — to modern taste, smacks 
strongly of religious cant. But this old phrase is full of 
meaning, — as full of meaning and signifying as much 
to-day as when used by the ancient Hebrew prophet. It 



244 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

is fitting, therefore, on such a day as this, to ask our- 
selves how human character can be formed so as to 
glorify that Creative Mind from which all sprang, by 
which all are sustained, and to which all rational intel- 
ligence shall return for account. 

There are three ways of looking at character. First, 
there is the view that regards it as the mere spontaneous 
outgrowth of inherited or implanted impulses; some- 
thing moved from within, but affected from without, 
springing up like a mushroom, and gone in a day. There 
are plenty of such characters. Another way of looking 
at character is by architectural imagery. Character is 
something carefully built up, slowly and steadily rising. 
Character may be built on a deep, broad substructure, 
great blocks of truth sunk deep in the human mind. 
On such a foundation one can rear a magnificent structure 
which no vicissitudes can shake, no human calamity 
overturn. Such a one is not formed in an hour or a day, 
but requires a lifetime. It is formed by earnest 
thoughts, persistent purposes, under hardships, in spite 
of temptations, slowly reared as a grand temple. An- 
other more common idea of character is suggested by the 
origin of the word. It may be regarded as a mere imprint 
received from environment, or as an imprint not deter- 
mined solely by environment, but also by our wills con- 
trolling and effecting the impression we choose to receive. 
The Greek word from which " character " is derived 
means a stamp, then the impress of the stamp, then the 
strong, abiding impression which the human soul, by 
inward power, shapes from outward influences. On either 
of these conceptions you fix your eyes on the inward 



GOD GLORIFIED IN CHARACTER. 245 

forces, — thought, purpose, and moral effort. In all cases 
character depends entirely on a clear perception of life, 
a clear resolution as to the use to be made of life ; on the 
purpose which a man forms, and towards which he directs 
his energies. 

There can be no impression on anything so unstable as 
water; there must be a consistency, to determine what 
kind of an impression is to be received. The question 
arises, whence do we derive our impressions ? There are 
two great theories of the origin of the universe. Those 
are called theists who regard the world as the creation of 
an Omnipotent, Omniscient, and infinitely Benevolent 
Being. God created the world from an irresistible over- 
flow of benevolence, because He desired to create beings 
upon which to lavish His goodness. To such an extent 
is this carried that it is claimed the whole universe is a 
boundless system to promote satisfaction. Human satis- 
faction is blessedness. The world teems and produces 
that man may gather, saying : " We are the little sover- 
eigns ; we are the beings for whom the heavens roll, and 
whom God girds Himself to wait on. " The other theory 
is exactly opposed to this. God in His eternal counsels 
created the universe for His own ends, His own glory, 
that we might see His wisdom and glory. Human 
beings were created to perceive, recognize, and declare 
His wisdom and glory. This, carried to its utmost ex- 
tent, lands us in the conception that all beings were 
created only to set forth the justice and mercy of God. 
Human happiness is not excluded, but it exists to sub- 
serve the Divine ends. It has even been said that a por- 
tion of the race is predestined to eternal damnation to 



246 BACCALAUEEATE SERMONS. 

illustrate the Divine glory. Each of these theories is 
an extreme to which we refuse our assent. Yet we may 
believe that the world exists for the glory of God without 
accepting the grimness of the latter theory. Human 
happiness and Divine glory are so intimately connected 
that we cannot think of one without the other; they 
cannot be separated. 

Grant that this is true, what, then, should be our 
ruling purpose ? We must fix distinctly on an unchang- 
ing purpose, that our acts shall have constant regard to 
the honor and glory of that Being who gave us existence 
and made it blessed, — a purpose that requires the help 
of God, and has the service of God as its end. Here 
we cannot forget how utterly unfitted human beings 
are to make themselves objects of glory. No man 
can set himself up to glorify himself without failure. 
Such is the competition and selfishness of the world that 
he will find himself thwarted at every step. Only he 
who loses his life for righteousness' sake shall save it. 

No man can reach a position desirable for him to 
obtain, who does not reach it as the result of the Divine 
ordering. He is not placed in it simply because man- 
kind sees he is fitted to obtain it. There is no creature 
who creeps about on the earth who is so despicable as 
the man who seeks his own aggrandizement and gratifi- 
cation; and no creatures are so mean as the men who 
seek glory for themselves at the expense of others. But 
he who looks about him, searching into the world and 
looking afar, bent on seeking the Divine will which is 
also seeking him, is sure to find that will, and often at 
unexpected times and places. 



GOD GLORIFIED IN CHARACTER. 247 

While it may not be true that it is right for a human 
being to seek glory as his end, it is true that God has the 
right to seek a special object of glorification. Two dis- 
tinct thoughts are connected with the idea of glory. The 
old writers used to speak of essential glory and declara- 
tive glory. The essential was that which was inherent 
in being. God alone has that. The declarative glory is 
that which makes known His glory, His glorious will. 
God makes known His purpose to glorify man, and 
therefore He is glorifying His own ends. So that we can 
not separate human happiness from Divine glory. To 
glorify God, therefore, is to declare, to make known His 
glory. You may ask how a declaration of Divine glory 
can be made in the world ? First of all, by declaring 
its worth. How we set to work to glorify man ! How 
men glorify military genius with epics ! How men 
glorify holiness with lyrics, as David glorified the holi- 
ness of God ! There is something to recognize in God. 
Are not men exalted who ponder on the nature of God, 
His holiness, His love, His infinite mercies ? Do they 
not thus declare His glory ? How are we lifted up and 
inspired by the contemplation of that majestic character 
illustrious above all at the Centennial Exposition ! How 
men going to and fro on that busy street in New York 
look up at the serene bronze face of the statue in front 
of the Treasury building, and glorify his patriotism ! 
It lifts up every human heart by its dignity, until one is 
constrained to say, so may I live that my life may be 
an honor to my country, a sacrifice for the common weal. 
How infinitely more, when one turns to Christ and hears 
the cry, " I have finished the work Thou gavest me to 



248 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

do, Father, glorify Thy name ! " are we stimulated to all 
that is best and noblest in life, all that can glorify " our 
Father " and His Father. 

There is no principle of human nature which so ele- 
vates the human soul as gratitude. We despise the man 
whose heart contains envy. Noble characters recognize 
worth wherever it is, and glorify it. Gratitude to God, 
the Giver of every good and perfect gift, is our highest 
glory. He whose wisdom is written all over the heavens 
and the earth, whose tender mercies temper His resist- 
less judgments, has Himself told us in what a man 
should glory : " Let him that glorieth glory in this, 
that he understandeth and knoweth Me ; that I am the 
Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and 
righteousness in the earth. " Can grateful hearts think 
of anything more worthy of glory ? In a generation like 
ours, in which we are called on to believe that the course 
of the world is only a blind progress, blundering on 
towards human ends, does it not become us to see in 
this wonderful evolution the Divine glory ; to set forth 
that Divine order which, out of the chaos of the past, has 
ever more and more manifested forth the glory of God's 
laws, His justice, and His mercy ? 

But there is another reason for giving God glory, and 
why we should not deprive Him of the glory due Him. 
It is in the power which He has given to man to accom- 
plish great ends. You can recognize this regard for Him 
in the most imperfect forms. Take Mahomet, who taught 
his disciples the war cry with which they swept over 
Eastern Europe, " Allah is Allah. " It fired their souls 
with the thought, that God is God, and that He had com- 



GOD GLORIFIED IN CHARACTER. 249 

mitted to them the destiny of a people, the power of 
doing and enforcing His will. It fired their hearts in 
the midst of conquest. So, in Crom well's army, we 
have another and higher example of the power given to 
men to accomplish great ends. What they were, those 
old Ironsides, we know. We stigmatize them as self- 
glorifying Calvinists ; but they had conceptions of right, 
of justice, and of belief in God. And though they had 
canting men among them, they believed thoroughly that 
they were fighting, as they truly were, for the glory of 
God. We know what was in the minds of those who 
came to our own country. What nerved them but the 
glory of God ? True, they asked for freedom to worship 
God ; but they had also the other thought, — that God 
had trusted the greatness of His religion to them to de- 
fend. So all through history there is to be seen one great 
unfailing purpose. Is there not a mind there, a divine 
purpose ? What can so exalt human nature as to unite 
itself to that Divine unchanging Purpose which uplifts, 
and upholds, and gives victory. Take that noted man of 
a little more than a century ago, the stern old Calvinist, 
Samuel Hopkins. Kept on a salary of an almost starva- 
tion amount, his thoughts were so filled with the majesty 
and glory of God that his soul was fired to set it forth. 
Before him, here in Ehode Island, were men engaged in 
selling the flesh and blood of slaves. Standing here, he 
bearded the men in his own congregation, on whom his 
subsistence depended. There is something heroic in it. 
Two modern writers, Froude and Bancroft, each wrote 
a special paper on Calvinism, — a principle as old as 
human thinking, — wherein they declared that no great 



250 BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. 

movement for three centuries could be traced that had 
not had this central thought behind it. Never was there 
a period more fitting to declare it than now. So might 
we enumerate many another reason why each of us should 
decide to be guided by, and unite with, that Will by 
which the world was created and is governed. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: Doubtless each 
one of you has already laid something of the foundation 
of your future character. Your character has already 
begun to be formed. Whether upon a foundation of 
righteousness, love, and truth, God and you alone know. 
Each one of you, looking into your own heart, may 
know the kind of character you possess, and whether it is 
worthy a divine recognition. You have reached a period 
of reflection and anticipation. Every youth 

" By visions splendid 
Is on his way attended." 

Those visions will fade in the coming days as the shades 
of the prison-house of life close around you. You are 
coming to see the temptations, trials, vicissitudes, and 
dangers of life, to see the necessity of calling on high 
inward principles of action, uniformly, persistently. 
What is your life to be ? Will you forget God, striving 
to build on a foundation of your own strength with the 
materials that lie around human souls ? Or will you say 
unto yourselves, " As for me, I seek to honor Him who 
has set before me my task, who has transformed my 
soul, and to honor the name He has called me by * ? He 
alone can bring you out of all that can debase, to purity 



GOD GLORIFIED IN CHARACTER. 251 

and beauty of character. Be assured that a character 
formed steadily by daily acts is an indestructible posses- 
sion. God Almighty, I say it reverently, cannot destroy 
human character. No fire can burn it, no robber can rob 
you of it ; it is yours forever. But you must build it 
slowly, steadily. The piercing eyes of man will pro- 
nounce a judgment if it is right. But each choice is a 
crisis. The judgment is not of the hour. God calls 
you to eternal judgment. Beginning now, a consumma- 
tion for eternity will be reached at the throne of God. 
In the final judgment you will say, God's gifts are of 
God. God help you! God helping you, may you 
render unto Christ the things that are Christ's, — your 
acquisitions, your services, yourselves. 



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